BT  1101  .G56  1913 
Glover,  T.  R.  1869-1943 
The  Christian  tradition  and 
its  verification 


y 

• THE  ANGUS  LECTURESHIP 


VIII 

THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION  AND 
ITS  VERIFICATION 


1912 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2016 


https://archive.org/details/christiantraditi00glov_0 


THE 

CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 
AND 

ITS  VERIFICATION  . 


UNIVERSITY  LECTURER  IN  ANCIENT  HISTORY 


NEW  YORK 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


1913 


PRELIMINARY  NOTE 


' I ^HE  Angus  Lectureship  has  its  origin  in  a 
^ Fund  raised  as  a Testimonial  to  the  Rev. 
Joseph  Angus,  M.A.,  D.D.,  as  an  expression  of 
the  sense  entertained  by  the  subscribers  of  his 
character  and  services  as  President  of  the 
Baptist  Theological  College,  formerly  situated 
at  Stepney,  and  now  at  Regent’s  Park, 
London.  Dr.  Angus  having  intimated  his 
desire  that  the  Fund  should  be  devoted  to 
the  establishment  of  a permanent  Lecture- 
ship in  connection  with  the  College,  a Trust 
has  been  constituted  for  that  purpose;  its 
income  to  be  “ administered  and  applied  by 
the  College  Committee  for  the  establishment 
and  maintenance  of  a Lectureship,  to  be 
called  ‘ The  Angus  Lectureship,’  in  connection 
with  the  said  College,  for  the  delivery  of 
periodic  Lectures  on  great  questions  con- 
nected with  Systematic,  Practical,  or  Pastoral 


VI 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


Theology,  or  the  Evidences  and  Study  of  the 
Bible,  or  Christian  Missions,  or  Church 
History,  or  Kindred  Subjects.” 

It  is  further  provided  that  the  College  Com- 
mittee, in  conjunction  Avith  the  Trustees,  shall 
once  in  two  years,  or  oftener  (should  excep- 
tional circumstances  render  it  desirable), 
‘‘appoint  and  engage  a Lecturer,  who  shall 
ordinarily  be  a member  of  the  Baptist  denomi- 
nation, but  who  may  occasionally  be  a 
member  of  any  other  body  of  Evangelical 
Christians,  to  deliver  a course  of  not  more 
than  eight  Lectures,  on  some  subject  of  the 
nature  hereinbefore  mentioned.” 

In  accordance  with  these  provisions,  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Angus  delivered,  at  Regent’s  Park 
College,  in  the  year  1896,  a Course  of  Six 
Lectures  on  ‘‘  Regeneration,”  afterwards 
published. 

The  Eighth  Course,  delivered  at  Regent’s 
Park  College  in  the  year  1912,  is  contained 
in  the  present  volume. 


Note. — The  sentences  above  marked  as  quotations  are  from 
the  Deed  of  Trust,  executed  March,  1896. 


PREFACE 


T N the  first  book  of  The  Faerie  Queene, 
-*■  Spenser’s  heroine  is  Una,  who  is  Truth. 
Her  beauty  is  spiritual,  and  we  see  it  tame 
the  lion  and  soften  the  “ salvage-men  ” — and 
this  at  first  sight.  Yet  it  is  not  till  the  end  of 
the  book  that  the  Red  Cross  Knight  realizes 
her  beauty.  He  forsakes  her;  he  is  entrapped 
by  Duessa,  who  is  Falsehood ; he  is  imprisoned 
in  the  Castle  of  Pride,  and  from  this  bondage 
it  is  Una  that  rescues  him.  Despair  would 
have  him  kill  himself ; and  she  again  rescues 
him,  and  leads  him  to  the  house  of  Caelia 
and  on  to  Charissa,  who  is  Grace,  and  thence 
to  the  hill  of  Contemplation.  Then  at  last 
he  is  fit  to  slay  the  Dragon.  The  tenderness 
and  healing  power  of  Truth  have  rarely  been 
so  well  drawn.  On  through  repentance  and 
forgiveness  to  the  heavenly  vision.  Truth  has 
brought  her  knight.  Yet  it  is  not  till  after 

vii 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


viii 

the  desperate  three  days  of  battle  with  the 
Dragon  that  the  Red  Cross  Knight  sees  Una 
without  her  veil. 

The  blazing  brightnesse  of  her  beauties  beame, 

And  glorious  light  of  her  sunshyny  face, 

To  tell  were  as  to  strive  against  the  streame : 

My  ragged  rimes  are  all  too  rude  and  bace 
Her  heavenly  lineaments  for  to  enchace. 

Ne  wonder;  for  her  own  deare  loved  knight, 

All  were  she  daily  with  himselfe  in  place. 

Did  wonder  much  at  her  celestial  sight. 

Oft  had  he  seen  her  faire,  but  never  so  fair  dight. 

“ Our  sage  and  serious  poet  ” Spenser  has 
grasped  the  fact  that,  while  Truth  captures 
us  in  the  first  instance  by  its  beauty,  we  never 
realize  that  beauty  till  we  have  learnt  in  ex- 
perience how  much  Truth  can  do  for  us,  and 
how  much  we  can  do  for  Truth  and  can  suffer 
for  Truth.  And  in  the  allegory  Una  is  not 
merely  Truth,  but  the  Christian  Religion. 

The  old  allegory  stands ; and  it  is  a pity 
that  men  and  women  do  not  read  the  wonder- 
ful poem  more  than  they  do.  There  are  those 
who  can  decide  about  Truth  at  first  glance, 
or  even  without  a first  glance  on  a priori 
grounds,  but  Spenser  knew  better. 


PREFACE 


IX 


The  drift  of  this  little  book  is  briefly  this. 
In  all  modern  study  the  emphasis  falls  on 
verification — on  insistent  reference  to  fact  that 
can  be  tested  and  relied  on.  No  other  method 
is  going  to  show  the  significance  and  value 
of  the  Christian  religion — that  greatest  of  all 
our  traditions.  Experience  alone  will  tell 
us  what  it  means.  Here,  I hope  in  a 
scientific  spirit,  it  is  urged  that  we  familiarize 
ourselves  with  the  mass  of  experience  the 
Church  of  Jesus  Christ  has  had  of  Him; 
and  I believe  that  such  a course  will 
lead  us  on  to  experiment,  and  that  when 
we,  like  the  Red  Cross  Knight,  have  found 
what  life  in  Truth  is,  we  too  shall  share  his 
wonder  at  the  unsuspected  beauty  of  the 
fuller  vision. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

LECTURE  I I 

The  Challenge  to  Verification. 

Modern  thought  and  its  factors,  p.  3. 

1.  Natural  Science — p.  5. 

(а)  Its  actual  contributions  to  knowledge  as 

disturbances  to  Christian  tradition,  p.  6. 

(б)  Its  effect  upon  our  habits  of  thought — viz., 

partial  investigation,  failure  of  imagina- 
tion, and  lack  of  philosophy;  yet  an 
impetus  given  to  verification,  p.  12. 

2.  Social  and  Economic  Science — The  study  of 

environments,  p.  16. 

3.  History — Race  problems  and  world  movements, 

p.  19. 

4.  Comparative  Study  of  Religion,  p.  22 — 

(a)  Carlyle  on  Mohammad — Zoroaster,  Buddha, 

the  Bab. 

(b)  Folklore,  p.  25. 

5.  Study  of  the  origins  of  Christianity,  p.  26. 

6.  The  other  knowledge  of  the  Poet,  p.  27. 

The  twofold  call  to  feeling  and  verification,  p.  31. 

LECTURE  II  33 

The  Use  of  Tradition. 

The  challenge  to  verification  is  met  by  the  question  as  to 
the  use  of  history,  of  tradition. 

We  have  to  study — 

1.  The  value  and  place  of  Tradition  in  sound  thinking. 

2.  How  to  discriminate  between  Traditions,  p.  35. 
Discussion  as  to  Dogma  and  Tradition  in  relation  to 

Religion,  p.  36 — with  a caution  as  to  the  use  of  theory — 
the  contrast  between  use  made  of  theory  in  scientific  work 
and  in  the  Church,  p.  39. 

xi 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


xii 

The  strength  of  Tradition,  p. 

The  combination  of  Inherited  Experience  and  Individual 
Experiment  is  the  key,  p.  45 — illustration  from  the  boat- 
builder,  and  its  application  to  the  sphere  of  Religion,  p.  46. 

The  principles  which  may  enable  us  to  judge  between 
one  set  of  Religious  Traditions  and  another,  p.  53. 

The  Christian  Tradition  to  be  considered  with  reference 
to — 

(а)  The  world  outside  Christ,  p.  60. 

(б)  The  Christian  Society,  p.  64. 

(c)  The  historical  Jesus  and  His  person  and  ideas, 

p.  66. 


LECTURE  III 

The  Significance  of  the  Christian 
Church, 

The  problem  of  its  growth,  continuity  and  permanence, 
p.  7 1 . The  endeavour  to  discover  the  source  of  its  strength, 
p.  72 — its  weakness  an  index  to  unsuspected  greatness,  p.  74. 

1.  The  way  in  which  the  Church  holds  its  main  doctrines 
— its  intellectual  right  to  do  so,  p.  78.  The  Sanity  of  the 
Christian  Church,  p.  79— 

(a)  Resting  on  the  value  of  experience,  p.  79. 

(b)  Tested  by  the  criticism  of  the  World,  p.  81. 

(c)  And  by  the  Church's  attempts  at  compromise, 

p.  83. 

(d)  The  fact  before  the  explanation,  p.  87. 

2.  The  conviction  of  the  Church  resulting  from  its 
experience,  p.  88 — 

(а)  The  serious  view  of  evil,  p.  88. 

(б)  The  inexorable  character  of  law,  p.  91. 

(c)  The  high  value  of  the  human  soul,  p.  93. 

(d)  The  significance  of  Jesus  Christ,  p.  90. 

3.  The  application  to  life,  p.  97 — 

(a)  The  Church  is  the  one  body  incapable  of 

despair,  p.  97. 

(b)  Its  clear  method,  p.  97.  The  three  great  types 

of  religion,  p.  98. 

(c)  Its  reliance  on  the  sufficiency  of  Jesus  Christ, 

p.  100. 

4.  Its  justification  in  results,  p.  101. 


CONTENTS 


xiii 

PAGE 

LECTURE  IV  103 

The  Experience  of  the  Early  Church. 

The  early  Christian  literature  and  its  demands  upon  the 
student  to  understand  it,  p.  104. 

1.  The  autobiographical  element  in  early  Christian 
writings  to  be  a guide  for  us  to  the  experience  behind 
them,  p.  105.  Norden  on  St.  Paul,  p.  107 — 

(a)  St.  Paul,  p.  109. 

(b)  The  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, 

p.  113. 

(c)  The  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  p.  114. 

(d)  The  first  doxology  of  the  Apocalypse,  p.  116. 

(e)  The  first  “ Harrowing  of  Hell,”  p.  122. 

2.  The  experiences  and  convictions  shared  by  all  these 
early  Christian  writers,  p.  125 — 

A.  The  New  Life,  p.  125. 

(a)  The  contrast  of  the  old  life  and  the  new,  p.  125. 

(b)  “ Photisthentes  ” — the  enlightenment,  p.  126. 

Clement  to  the  Corinthians,  p.  129. 

(c)  The  “arrhabon,”  and  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit, 

p.  129. 

B.  The  overcoming  of  national  and  social  barriers, 

p.  132 

C.  “ Before  the  foundation  of  the  World,”  p.  135. 


LECTURE  V 141 

Jesus  in  the  Christian  Centuries. 

The  study  of  the  Belief  in  Jesus  as  itself  a historical 
force — 

(a)  The  power  of  the  name,  p.  143.  Daemons, 

p.  144. 

(b)  Pro  quo  Christus  mortuus  est,  p,  155. 

(c)  The  progressive  training  of  conscience  and  the 

new  impulse,  p.  162. 

(^f)  The  Great  White  Throne,  and  Christian  self- 
criticism,  p.  168. 


xiv  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


PAGE 

The  Love  of  Jesus  in  History,  p.  172 — 

(a)  The  victory  over  disorder,  p.  172 — the  contri- 

bution to  sanity,  p.  175 — the  place  of  prayer, 
p.  176. 

(b)  The  new  attitude  to  pain,  p.  177. 

(c)  The  life  of  joy,  p.  179 — Richard  Rolle,  p.  181 — 

Wordsworth  on  " The  deep  power  of  joy,” 
p.  184 — personal  centre,  p.  185. 

(d)  The  sure  hope,  p.  187. 

Fact  and  word ; if  the  facts  of  the  Church  be  sure,  and 
the  speech  erroneous,  can  we  find  the  right  language  ? 

But  we  must  not,  in  so  doing,  lose  any  of  the  facts,  p.  190. 


LECTURE  VI  193 

The  Criticism  of  Jesus  Christ. 

All  turns  in  the  study  of  Christianity  upon  the  central 
figure,  p.  193. 

Why  some  judgment  upon  Christ  is  inevitable,  p.  195. 

His  historicity  is  certain,  p.  196 — Contrast  between  Jesus 
Christ  and  Zoroaster,  Buddha,  etc.,  p.  198. 

What  is  the  real  value  in  it  all  ? The  ethics  or  some- 
thing else  ? p.  200. 

The  contribution  of  Jewish  criticism  on  this  point,  p.  201. 

The  necessity  of  some  judgment  upon  Jesus  Christ  for 
the  serious  student  of  history  and  society,  p.  205. 

The  qualifications  for  such  a judgment  (with  two  pre- 
liminary cautions  as  to  the  difficulty  of  criticism,  and  of 
reconstructing  a personality),  p.  208. 

1.  Knowledge  of  the  historical  facts,  p.  213. 

2.  The  historical  imagination,  p.  217. 

3.  Sympathy  with  the  fundamental  ideas  and  feelings 
of  Jesus,  p.  219— 

(a)  His  passion  for  the  redemption  of  men,  p.  221. 

(b)  His  attitude  to  God,  p.  222. 

4.  The  sense  of  insufficiency,  p.  222. 

The  re-action  of  a profounder  study  upon  the  critic, 
p.  227. 


Uorepov  eX&ojv  avros  e^ijraKag  tovto,  y ttcus 
0L(r6a ; 

05(coC»',  Kol  irepi  rovTtov,  orav  p.r)KtTt 

eiKd^(op.€v,  oA.\  ySy  ei8!x)p.ev.  Tore  <rvp.^ov\- 
-€v<rop.€v. 


Socrates  ap.  Xen,  Mem,  iii.,  6,  ii. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 
AND  ITS  VERIFICATION 

LECTURE  I 

The  Challenge  to  Verification 

IT  is  a very  long  time  since  it  was  first 
pointed  out  that  the  Christian  faith  is 
untenable.  There  it  stands — belief  cast 
into  the  form  of  dogma,  implying  a unified 
view  of  the  world,  of  all  time,  and  all  exist- 
ence, and  setting  before  men  statements  of 
the  most  amazing  scope  with  reference  to  God 
and  man  and  their  relations  to  all  eternity. 
But,  in  some  particulars,  it  is  not  satis- 
factory, we  are  told;  it  goes  outside  what 
man  can  in  any  case  know,  and  it  rests 
on  the  preconceptions  of  a day  that  had 
neither  criticism  nor  science;  its  terminology 
bears  the  stamp  of  its  origin  and  proclaims 
how  obsolete  it  all  is.  We  are  so  conscious 
of  the  value  of  our  own  additions  to  know- 
ledge, that  a faith  which  seems  to  jar  with  them 


2 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


is  at  once  untenable.  But  this  is  not  peculiar 
to  us  at  all.  We  have  only  to  go  back  to  the 
eighteenth  century — to  what  Gibbon  in  his 
magnificent  way  called  “the  reason  and 
humanity  of  the  present  age” — to  find  the 
same  attitude  to  the  Christian  Church  and  its 
creeds ; and  yet  what  seemed  then  a sufficient 
account  of  life  to  replace  Christianity  has  by 
to-day  a starved  look — it  seems  a hard  and 
low-pulsed  sort  of  gospel  or  philosophy  for 
any  really  human  being. 

A critic  of  some  humour  has  suggested  that 
the  authentic  words  spoken  by  Adam  to  Eve, 
as  they  stepped  through  the  gate  of  the 
Garden  in  Eden,  were:  “We  live  in  times 
of  transition.”  The  habit  has  never  been 
lost;  we  still  live  in  times  of  transition.  We 
have  left  the  eighteenth  century  behind,  and, 
it  is  urged,  the  first  century  a great  deal 
further  behind.  The  days  are  past  when  our 
fathers  and  mothers,  in  their  quiet,  easy  way, 
could  hold,  unvexed  by  problems,  the  old 
Christian  faith.  Of  course,  such  talk  is 
frankly  absurd.  There  never  was  a time 
when  the  Christian  faith  was  unchallenged. 
By  every  sort  of  critic  it  has  always  been  ques- 


TRANSITION 


3 


tioned,  and  there  never  was  a day  when  it  was 
easy  to  believe  the  Christian  gospel*  or  to  live 
the  Christian  life.  The  contribution  of  the 
Church  to  mankind  would  have  been  less  if  its 
venture  into  the  unseen  had  been  limited  by 
the  views  of  its  critics. 

We  are  still  confronted  in  earnest  with  the 
Christian  faith,  whether  we  accept  it  or  reject 
it.  There  are  many  who  would  welcome  its 
final  disappearance ; there  are  many  more 
who,  while  they  think  it  may  disappear,  are 
not  eager  to  see  it  go  till  they  know  better 
what  is  to  take  its  place ; some  believe  there  is 
nothing  to  take  its  place  at  all,  and  deeply 
dread  its  going.  And  again,  there  are  those 
who  have  not  the  least  fear  about  the  Church 
remaining  and  becoming  a still  greater  force 
in  human  life. 

But  are  we  sure  about  the  new  factors 
operative  more  and  more  to-day  in  human 
thought?  It  is  to  these  that  I wish  to  give 
my  first  lecture.  In  the  next  two  we  shall 
discuss  the  place  of  tradition  in  sound  think- 


* My  friend,  Professor  D.  S.  Cairns,  quotes  Principal  Rainy’s 
remark  in  his  presence  : “ God  never  meant  it  to  be  an  easy  thing 
to  believe.” — Life  of  Rainy , ii.,  117. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


4 • 

ing,  and  the  general  sanity  of  the  Church 
in  its  methods  of  reaching  truth  and  in  its 
principles  of  verification.  Then  we  shall  turn 
to  the  actual  experience  of  the  Church,  in 
the  endeavour  to  learn  what  it  really  has 
been,  to  see  what  happened  or  happens  still, 
and  what  has  been  the  effect  for  mankind  of 
the  great  tenets  of  the  Church — particularly 
of  its  attitude  to  its  Founder.  The  Founder 
Himself  will  be  in  our  thoughts  throughout, 
and  in  the  last  lecture  an  attempt  will  be  made 
to  lay  down  the  lines  toward  a sounder 
realisation  of  His  significance. 

The  Church  never  had  a monopoly  in 
shaping  the  thoughts  of  men,  however  near 
it  may  seem  to  have  come  to  it  in  certain 
ages.  To-day  it  seems  further  from  it  than 
ever.  Into  the  great  inherited  body  of  thought 
that  makes  the  atmosphere  in  which  we  live 
and  move  and  think,  and  which  conditions  us 
and  our  thoughts  in  ways  past  finding  out, 
new  forces  have  come.  There  have  been 
changes  of  the  most  momentous  kind  in  the 
background  of  our  thinking,  in  the  nature  of 
our  thoughts,  and  in  the  very  minds  with  which 
we  think.  The  preconceptions  with  which  we 


CHANGES  IN  THOUGHT 


5 


start  have  been  changed,  and  in  a number  of 
different  ways. 

First  of  all  there  is  Natural  Science,  which 
has  imposed  its  methods  and  its  conclusions 
upon  us,  and  has  had  as  large  a share  in  the 
new  movements  of  our  times  and  our  fathers’ 
as  anything  else.  There  has  been  unsettle- 
ment, uncertainty  and  fear.  For  there  is  a 
type  of  scientific  man — not  so  common  now, 
perhaps,  as  formerly,  certainly  not  in  the  front 
ranks — who  has  rather  a loud  way  of  speak- 
ing, and  speaks  at  times  with  insufficient 
recognition  of  other  branches  of  study;  and 
he  has  fairly  done  his  part  in  emphasising, 
not  merely  the  difference  between  science 
and  religion,  but  his  own  strong  opinion  that 
religion  is  obsolete.  Long  ago  Plato  spoke 
of  “a  certain  old  quarrel  between  poetry  and 
philosophy,”*  and  this  is  another  of  the  same 
kind.  The  material  to  be  studied  is  different, 
and  the  methods  are  different,  as  is  neces- 
sarily the  case  when  different  aspects  of 
reality  have  to  be  investigated;  and  the  con- 
servative instinct  in  man  is  always  impatient  of 


Republic,  607,  B. 


6 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


foreign  method.  The  same  intolerance,  which 
is  sometimes  shown  by  students  of  science 
toward  religion,  is  also  shown,  in  measure, 
toward  history,  philosophy,  and  art,  and  it 
means  no  more  than  unfamiliarity.  But  this 
is  not  all;  for,  from  time  to  time,  great  ac- 
quisitions of  knowledge  have  been  made,  and 
securely  made,  which  clash  with  particular 
statements  long  maintained  with  great  con- 
fidence by  the  Church;  and  the  question  is 
asked  whether  (to  take  a simile  from  the  sea) 
the  Church’s  doctrine  is  in  watertight  com- 
partments, and,  even  if  so,  whether  enough  of 
them  have  not  been  injured  so  badly  as  to 
sink  her. 

The  first  great  change  is  associated  with  the 
name  of  Copernicus.  It  was  understood  that 
the  Church  was  committed  to  the  dogma  of 
a flat  earth  and  seven  or  more  spheres.  They 
had  stood  for  twenty  centuries,  and  Coper- 
nicus did  away  with  them.  Milton’s  works 
are,  in  English  literature,  a landmark  of  the 
change.  He  speaks  of  his  visit  to  Italy: 
“ There  it  was  that  I found,  and  visited  the 
famous  Galileo  grown  old,  a prisoner  to  the 
Inquisition,  for  thinking  in  Astronomy  other- 


THE  STARS  AND  THE  ROCKS 


7 


wise  than  the  Franciscan  and  Dominican 
licensers  thought.”  In  Paradise  Lost  he  re- 
curs several  times  to  the  problem,  leaning  to 
the  Copernican  system,  and  leaving  the 
Ptolemaic  to  Satan,  who  uses  it  naturally.  It 
is  clear  that  the  Roman  Church  felt  that  some- 
thing was  at  stake  in  spherical  astronomy. 
With  it  the  Neo-Platonists  had  connected  their 
theory  of  the  soul  and  its  descent  from  God 
to  earth;  and  with  it  was  still  bound  up  the 
destiny  of  the  soul  in  a local  heaven  to  which 
Christ  had  ascended. 

After  this  came  the  geological  trouble 
and  the  question  as  to  whether  Moses  and  his 
Genesis  squared  with  the  testimony  of  the 
rocks;  and  strange  attempts  were  made  to 
reconcile  them.  If  such  attempts  are  no 
longer  made,  it  is  because  Christian  thinkers 
have  become  content  to  do  without  the  recon- 
ciliation. 

But,  serious  as  Copernicus  and  the  geolo- 
gists had  seemed  to  orthodox  thinkers,  worse 
was  to  follow  when  Darwin  and  Huxley  taught 
men  to  think  in  terms  of  evolution.  A great 
epoch  was  made;  but,  as  happens  at  such 
times,  the  great  gains  were  misapplied  because 


8 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


of  recklessness  in  their  use.  Everybody 
talked  evolution  who  had  a fancy  for  being 
enlightened  or  abreast  of  the  times.  Every- 
thing was  referred  to  evolution,  whether  it 
had  any  relation  with  the  sphere  of  Darwin’s 
investigations  or  not.  Wherever  a progress 
could  be  observed,  it  was  at  once  put  down 
to  evolution.  Great  play  was  made  with 
heredity  and  environment  and  the  rest  of  the 
terminology.  I have  even  heard  a woman 
explain  that  with  modern  girls  tight-lacing 
was  practically  involuntary,  because  it  was 
an  inherited  acquired  instinct.  What  men  of 
scientific  mind  thought  of  all  this  reckless  talk 
we  can  guess.  Nothing  less  scientific  could  be 
imagined.  Darwin,  after  long  investigation 
and  thought,  suggests  a theory  to  explain 
certain  things  in  Biology ; and  a horde  of 
people  seize  it  and  apply  it,  without  anything 
approaching  Darwin’s  care  for  truth,  to  the 
most  disparate  matters  in  fields  of  study  as 
widely  removed  as  could  be  from  the 
biological.  Thought,  morals,  religion,  were 
all  suddenly  discovered  to  be  products  of  an 
evolution,  apparently  involuntary  and  in- 
evitable. Developments  could  be  observed  in 


EVOLUTION 


9 


these  spheres  of  life,  and  that  was  enough. 
How  those  developments  came  is,  however, 
a matter  of  history,  to  be  studied  with  refer- 
ence to  the  evidence ; and  the  virtual  abolition 
of  effort,  and,  incidentally,  of  personality,  was 
precipitate,* 

When,  after  a number  of  years,  a sugges- 
tion of  the  Bavarian  abb^  Gregor  Mendel, 
was  revived,  and  deliberate  experiments  were 
made  in  the  careful  breeding  of  plants,  birds, 
and  animals,  in  order  to  ascertain,  by  de- 
finite and  recorded  steps,  what  changes  are 
possible  in  the  development  of  species,  there 
were  some  further  examples  of  swift  thinking. 
Roughly  speaking,  the  experiments  have 
shown  that  the  results  obtained  in  breeding 
are  not,  if  a wide  enough  range  be  taken, 
irregular  or  freakish,  but  may  be  more  or  less 
accurately  reduced  to  mathematics — in  short, 
that  what  you  put  in,  you  get  out,  re-com- 
bined variously,  but  symmetrically.  You 


* Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton,  in  his  Club  of  Queer  Trades,  p.  236, 
wittily  sums  the  matter  up  in  the  sweeping  assertion  that  “the 
Darwinian  movement  has  made  no  difference  to  mankind,  except 
that,  instead  of  talking  unphilosophically  about  philosophy,  they 
now  talk  unscientifically  about  science.” 


lO 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


cannot,  perhaps,  predict  the  character  of  the 
offspring  of  a particular  pair  of  mice,  for  some 
may  die  or  other  unnoticed  factors  may  come 
in,  but  the  general  law  seems  roughly  estab- 
lished. From  this  point  one  conspicuous 
exponent  of  Mendelism  stepped  by  an  appar- 
ently easy  transition  to  a sweeping  re-assertion 
of  Determinism.  So  difficult  it  is  to  keep  the 
scientific  outlook  steady,  even  when  a man’s 
work  is  so  essentially  a matter  of  close  and 
exact  verification  as  that  of  the  Mendelists. 

Meanwhile,  in  Psychology  a very  brilliant 
book  caught  the  reading  public,  and  we  began 
to  learn  a new  language.  “ Uprushes  ” and 
“the  subliminal  self’’  and  “ auto-suggestion ’’ 
became  terms  as  familiar  and  as  precise  as 
“ justification  ’’  and  “ sanctification  ’’  had  been 
three  centuries  before.  Religion  was  ex- 
plained at  once — it  was  a matter  of  auto- 
suggestion. Certain  questions,  however,  may 
be  asked  here,  such  as : How  much  is  de- 
finitely known  as  to  auto-suggestion  ? or  is  it 
really  a splendid  guess?  Can  there  be  auto- 
suggestion without  reference  to  external  facts 
with  which  the  mind  of  the  person  concerned 
is  more  or  less  acquainted — in  other  words, 


THE  VALE  OF  BEAVOR  ii 

has  the  idea  to  be  suggested  to  the  autos,  or 
does  the  autos  suggest  it  to  itself — which  way 
does  evidence  point  ? Why  should  auto- 
suggestion,  when  it  takes  the  form  or  direction 
of  the  Christian  religion,  work  so  uniformly 
toward  sanity  and  morals ; is  there  anything 
significant  in  the  uniformity  ? and,  lastly. 
What  is  autos — ^one  of  the  oldest  of  philo- 
sophical difficulties  ? A solution  of  the  pro- 
blem of  the  nature  of  religion,  which  raises  so 
many  other  problems  at  the  first  breath,  does 
not  take  us  very  far. 

All  these  new  factors,  however,  are  in  the 
air,  and  the  combined  effect  of  them  is  very 
great.  They  make  us  feel  once  more  and  in 
a new  way  the  “great  Cloud”  that  came  over 
George  Fox  in  the  Vale  of  Beavor,  when  “ it 
was  said;  All  things  come  by  Nature ; And,” 
he  adds,  “ the  Elements  and  Stars  came  over 
me.”  Some  of  us  have  to  “sit  still  under  it  and 
let  it  alone  ” a good  deal  longer  than  he  had, 
before  “ a living  Hope  ” rises  in  us  and  “ a true 
Voice,”  to  tell  us ; “ There  is  a living  God,  who 
made  all  things.”  There  are  so  many  more 
stars  in  three  hundred  years,  and  so  many 
more  elements,  and  so  much  stranger  ones; 


12 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


space  is  more  vast  to-day  than  ever  Fox 
dreamed;  and  we  are  challenged  more  seri- 
ously than  ever  on  the  fundamental  question 
as  to  whether  man  “ comes  by  Nature,”  and  is 
a mere  product,  or  whether  he  has  any 
spiritual  freedom  at  all. 

But  there  is  more  to  be  said,  for  the  chief 
effect  of  the  modern  study  of  Natural  Science 
has  not  been  so  much  to  challenge  us  with 
definite  and  established  knowledge,  or  with 
theories  of  high  probability  and  great  bril- 
liance, as  to  affect  our  habits  of  mind  and  our 
methods  in  thought.  The  scientific  man  is 
occupied  in  an  investigation  which  avowedly 
affects  only  one  small  part  of  the  area  of 
all  knowledge ; his  research  is  partial,  he  has  a 
special  subject,  and  his  affirmation  on  his  own 
subject  is  apt  to  be  tentative  and  provisional; 
indeed,  as  he  grows  to  be  a master  in  his  own 
department,  it  often  happens  that  he  is  more 
and  more  reluctant  to  hazard  any  statement  of 
scope  or  range  concerning  it  without  inter- 
minable qualifications.  This  habit  of  mind  has 
passed  over  into  other  studies,  and  we  have 
in  common  the  weaknesses  that  go  with  it. 
The  passion  for  accuracy  is  a noble  one,  but 


REACTION  OF  SPECIALIST  STUDIES  13 


if  it  be  cramped  in  a very  small  sphere,  a 
partial  investigation,  it  results,  unless  a man 
is  on  his  guard  against  it,  in  a certain 
failure  of  the  imagination.  This  is  not  un- 
common among  specialists.  The  mind  loses 
powers  by  perpetually  dwelling  on  one  subject 
— “ that  way  madness  lies,”  as  Lear  said. 
The  atrophy  of  faculty  does  not  make  a man 
more  competent  to  speak  in  his  own  depart- 
ment, still  less  of  matters  that  lie  outside  it. 
But  we  constantly  find  a type  of  specialist  who 
is  contemptuous  of  studies  and  interests  of 
which  he  is  ignorant.  With  the  best  men  it  is 
very  different. 

Another  weakness  which  we  all  share,  as 
knowledge  grows  from  more  to  more,  is  a 
lack  of  synthesis.  One  feature  of  Elizabethan 
England,  as  of  Periclean  Athens,  was  what 
has  been  called  the  ‘‘  integrity  ” of  the  period. 
The  same  man  touched  all  knowledge  and 
all  activity ; he  could  write  a poem,  sail  a ship, 
beat  a Spaniard  in  fight  or  a Papist  in  argu- 
ment— the  world  had  a unity  for  him.  For 
us  the  world  is  hardly  a unity,  except  by  logic ; 
it  is  a series  of  bits,  the  relations  of  which 
we  do  not  readily  grasp.  There  is  lack  of 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


14 

knowledge  and  lack  of  intelligence ; in  a word, 
lack  of  philosophy.  Now  the  philosopher,  as 
we  know,  is  liable  to  err,  and  to  err  very 
badly — 

An  innocent  mind,  but  far  astray — 
he  is  liable  to  be  very  dogmatic,  and  to 
domineer  with  a truculence  little  short  of  that 
of  the  man  of  science  at  his  worst.  But  to  be 
content  to  lack  philosophy  is  surely  to  abdi- 
cate manhood ; yet  we  do  it.  We  do  not  frame 
systems  of  thought  for  ourselves ; we  avowedly 
refrain  from  it;  and  yet,  in  a subtle  and 
insidious  way,  they  frame  themselves  for  us; 
and  such  un-thought-out  systems  of  thought 
are  very  dangerous,  especially  if  we  are  people 
of  books  and  laboratories,  a little  remote  from 
ordinary  life.  But  religion  implies  a certain 
amount  of  deliberate  philosophy — it  involves 
an  ordered  world,  or  a world  getting  moved 
in  the  direction  of  order,  and  a God  at  the 
top  of  it  or  in  the  heart  of  it,  interested  effec- 
tively in  it,  somehow;  and  it  further  implies 
a relation  between  this  God  and  the  man. 
Even  to  such  a rudimentary  philosophy  a 
certain  class  of  scientist  is  contemptuous  again, 
and  again  for  the  same  reason.  It  lies  out- 


THE  NEED  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


15 


side  him,  and  it  implies  an  energy  of  thought 
for  which  he  has  not  braced  himself.  It  runs 
counter  to  the  presuppositions,  the  un-thought- 
out  system,  into  which  he  has  slidden. 

This  is  the  experience  of  very  many  of  us 
— we  have  lost  the  sense  of  the  whole  in  the 
fascination  and  interest  of  the  part.  Words- 
worth, in  his  Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immor- 
tality, gives  a picture  of  some  such  auto- 
biography : how  the  vision  splendid  fades  into 
the  light  of  common  day,  as  Earth,  the  homely 
nurse,  doth  all  she  can  to  make  her  foster- 
child  forget  the  glories  he  hath  known.  And 
then,  in  the  great  stanzas  that  follow,  where 
he  speaks  of  “obstinate  questionings  of 
sense  and  outward  things,”  the  poet  touches 
those  experiences  which  challenge  the  narrow 
dogmatism  of  common  sense  and  partial 
knowledge — which  we  can  almost  abolish  if 
we  give  our  minds  to  it,  and  the  abolition  of 
which  will  ruin  us.  Yet  plenty  of  men  seem  to 
be  imprisoned  almost  hopelessly  in  the  zest  of 
interests  that  frankly  cover  the  smallest  arc  of 
the  circle  of  life.  The  excuse  is,  of  course, 
the  vast  range  and  difficulty  of  scientific  work 
— di  confession,  in  so  many  words,  of  failure. 


i6 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a noble 
contribution  which  the  scientific  mind  is 
making  to  the  religious,  a keen  and  quickened 
sense  of  truth  and  a passion  for  verification. 
And  it  is  a curious  situation  when  the  man 
of  science  says  to  the  disciple  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth:  “Make  sure;  be  sure  that  you 
know;  look  to  it  for  yourself;  verify.”  It  is 
the  method  of  Jesus  Himself,  and  it  will  give 
us  again  “the  deep  and  firm  sense  of  reality,” 
which,  as  Matthew  Arnold  pointed  out,* 
characterises  the  thinking  of  Jesus;  for 
“theory,”  as  Arnold  elsewhere  says,  “Jesus 
never  touches,  but  bases  Himself  invariably 
upon  experience. ”t  If  we  are  to  do  anything 
with  religion,  the  first  thing  is  to  be  done  with 
preconceptions  (as  far  as  that  is  possible  for 
man)  and  to  learn  what  can  be  from  what  has 
been  and  what  does  occur.  To  this  we  shall 
have  to  return  in  the  next  lecture. 

Let  us  pass  on  to  another  branch  of  study — 
a study  full  of  the  enthusiasm  of  youth  and 
new  methods — Social  Science,  as  it  is  called, 


Preface  to  God  and  the  Bible. 
t Literature  and  Dogma,  ch.  7. 


SOCIAL  SCIENCE 


17 


though  the  name  is  a large  one,  and  perhaps 
not  yet  quite  vindicated.  We  have  been 
brought — and  it  is  a good  thing  that  we  have 
been  so  brought — face  to  face  in  a new  way 
with  poverty.  The  poor  we  have  always  with 
us,  but  we  have  not  been  earnest  enough  in 
asking  Why;  and  that  we  are  now  being  told 
with  vehemence,  not  unwarranted  when  men 
are  so  slow  to  listen.  This  is  not  the  first 
generation,  if  it  may  be  said  with  modesty, 
that  has  felt  the  problem  of  poverty ; but  men 
are  probing  more  deeply  into  causes  and 
factors,  with  a new  alertness  for  evidence. 
The  mind  of  the  social  student  dwells  on  en- 
vironment as  the  scientific  man’s  on  heredity, 
and  the  besetting  sin  of  quick  thinking,  which 
haunts  science  and  theology,  is  not  unknown 
here.  The  problem  of  evil  has  taken  on  a new 
form  for  the  social  researcher  and  the  social 
worker;  and  some  of  the  evils  they  see  are 
so  obvious,  and  yet  so  much  ignored,  that 
their  desperately  quick  remedies  are  intelli- 
gible. Delay  is  at  the  cost  of  life  and  mind  and 
moral  being ; and  the  suggestion  of  the  Church 

that,  by  the  Soul 

Only,  the  nations  shall  be  great  and  free. 


2 


i8 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


is  scouted  more  fiercely  than  it  deserves 
to  be.  The  moral  evils  of  destitution  are 
familiar  to  the  social  worker;  and,  if 
destitution  were  abolished,  they  would  mostly 
disappear,  he  believes.  It  means  once  more 
that  man  is  a product  of  heredity  and 
environment,  the  outcome  of  forces  and 
factors  he  cannot  control;  that  the  margin 
of  spiritual  freedom  is  extraordinarily  narrow. 
That  is  very  quick  thinking.  It  is  curious, 
too,  to  find  such  an  approximation  between 
the  modern  reformer  and  old  Cephalos,  in 
Plato’s  Republic,  who  was  glad  that  he  had 
been  rich,  because  riches  save  a man  from  so 
much  sin.  The  Church  has  always  had  a 
deeper  view  of  sin  than  this. 

Once  again,  the  impression  left  on  the  mind 
is  that  of  an  immense  range  of  knowledge  to 
be  explored  and  known.  How  many  factors 
are  there  in  the  problem  of  poverty?  how  do 
they  work,  and  how  are  their  workings  inter- 
woven, and  how  are  they  to  be  measured  ? 
If  History  teaches  anything  here,  it  is  the 
imperative  need  of  the  closest  and  most  accu- 
rate thinking  on  the  basis  of  the  fullest  know- 
ledge— that  we  must  go  slowly.  Yes,  say  our 


HISTORY 


19 


friends,  History  is  far  slower  than  death  and 
disease.  Still,  here  again  we  are  challenged 
to  verification.  Is  it  possible  that  the  Chris- 
tian Church  or  its  critics  can  have  overlooked 
factors  of  moment  ? 

But  we  have  invoked  History,  and  History 
also  is  touched  with  the  scientific  spirit — if  it 
is  not,  as  some  severe  students  of  it  urge,  a 
science  itself.  The  origins  of  the  human  race 
and  the  growth  of  nations  are  being  investi- 
gated with  more  reference  to  facts  than  in 
the  old  days  when,  as  the  severe  say.  History 
flourished  with  Literature  at  her  one  elbow 
and  Moral  Philosophy  at  the  other.  What  is 
race?  Is  Nature,  after  all,  “so  careful  of  the 
type  ” ? In  some  quarters  we  are  assailed  with 
large  statements  about  tall  fair  men  and  little 
dark  men,  dolichocephalous  and  brachy- 
cephalous,  breeds  with  great  differences  of 
endowment ; and  we  are  warned  that,  if 
eugenics  be  not  carefully  studied,  that  balance 
between  the  ethnic  varieties  may  be  lost  which 
makes  England  what  it  is.  It  is  not,  however, 
historians  who  talk  in  this  way.  History  is  a 
very  long  story  for  them;  and  they  ask,  quite 
honestly,  because  they  do  not  know,  whether 


20 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


a race  is  a fixed  type  or  a shifting  type; 
whether  differences  of  climate  and  food  over 
long  periods  affect  the  cephalic  index  and  the 
varieties  of  endowment ; whether  Anglo- 
Saxons  were  really  Anglo-Saxons  for  many 
millennia  before  Julius  Csesar  studied  the 
Germans  ? and  other  questions.  If  every- 
thing is  a matter  of  race — if  temperament, 
religion,  morality,  art,  genius,  and  the  rest, 
all  depend  on  race — then  let  us  be  sure 
we  know  something  about  it ; for,  at 
present,  unless  brilliant  guesses  based  on 
evidence,  that  would  be  valuable  if  its  relations 
were  understood,  be  knowledge,  we  know  very 
little  about  race.*  It  is  another  call  to 
verification. 

Of  course,  in  dealing  with  race,  the  historian 
is  defending  himself  against  the  popular 
biologist,  but  he  sometimes  needs  defence 
against  himself.  There  are  the  great  world- 
movements  in  historic  times  — whole  ages 
dominated  by  certain  types  of  thought,  in 
which,  if  a man  appear  who  reaches  too  far 
into  the  future,  he  is  useless,  however  truly  he 

* A distinguished  anthropologist  tells  me  I should  have  said 
that  ‘‘  nothing  ” is  known  about  race, 


HISTORY 


21 


may  anticipate  the  actual  developments  of 
thought  and  life  in  generations  after  his  own. 
At  least,  so  it  is  said,  and  we  do  find  men  who 
were,  as  we  say,  before  their  time,  though 
often,  on  closer  investigation,  it  looks  as  if 
their  anticipations  were  made  rather  by  long 
jumps,  and  lacked  the  intermediate  steps 
which  make  for  real  progress.  Why  is  it  that 
man  moves  so  slowly,  and  is  so  desperately 
in  bondage  to  his  own  day  ? One  answer  is  that 
he  is  not  in  fact  nearly  as  much  in  bondage 
to  his  day  as  he  seems  in  retrospect.  Yet 
the  historian  observes  a relation  between 
political  and  social  conditions  and  thought — 
e.g.,  under  the  successors  of  Alexander  the 
Great  and  under  the  early  Roman  Empire, 
under  Turkish  sultans  and  Indian  rajahs, 
philosophy  leans  to  fatalism,  as  if  the  experi- 
ence of  arbitrary  and  incalculable  government 
took  the  initiative  out  of  men’s  minds  and 
turned  them  toward  submission  without 
action.  We  find  something  of  the  kind  in 
history,  but  we  must  be  careful  once  more 
about  sweeping  statements.  Men  and  peoples 
are  under  the  influence  of  the  old  and  middle- 
aged  more  than  we  suppose,  and  move  slowly. 


22 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


but  most  of  the  talk  about  the  unchanging 
East  (for  example)  is  fortified  by  wide  ignor- 
ance of  Eastern  history.  The  East  does 
change,  and  man  is  no  more  the  victim  of 
place  than  of  race,  much  as  both  influence 
him.  The  historian  insists,  like  other  serious 
thinkers,  on  much  more  earnest  standards  of 
verification  than  the  journalist  or  the  amateur. 

A new  factor  in  these  generations  is  the 
comparative  study  of  religion.  It  offers  a 
most  fascinating  field  of  work.  The  great 
religious  systems  of  the  world  have  been 
studied  with  new  sympathy  and  new  know- 
ledge, as  their  sacred  books  have  become 
known  in  the  West.  Carlyle’s  treatment  of 
Mahomet  is  a familiar  landmark  here — “ a 
silent  great  soul;  he  was  one  of  those  who 
cannot  but  be  in  earnest;  whom  Nature  her- 
self has  appointed  to  be  sincere.  While 
others  walk  in  formulas  and  hearsays,  con- 
tented enough  to  dwell  there,  this  man  could 
not  screen  himself  in  formulas ; he  was  alone 
with  his  own  soul  and  the  reality  of  things. 
The  great  Mystery  of  Existence  glared  in 
upon  him,  with  its  terrors,  with  its  splendours.” 
Zoroaster  and  Buddha  have  become  more 


STUDY  OF  RELIGIONS 


23 


familiar  and  intelligible  figures ; we  see  what 
they  meant  and  how  they  came  to  mean  it. 
There  is  Hinduism,  too,  more  intelligible  in 
its  turn  when  we  know  something  of  its 
history — not  unlike  Neo-Platonism.  We  are 
taught  to  realise  the  great  elements  in  all 
these  systems.  And  among  the  great  religious 
teachers  is  Jesus  of  Nazareth— but  here  one  is 
half  tempted  to  quote  Tertullian’s  sharp  word : 
“ Here  human  curiosity  ceases  to  be  inquisi- 
tive.” It  would  not  be  strictly  true,  and  yet 
how  many  popular  critics  of  religion  have 
troubled  to  give  Him  the  full  study  that  is 
needed  to  understand  Him  ? 

The  problems  raised  by  this  comparative 
study  of  religions  are  many.  Thus  and  thus, 
again  and  again,  the  minds  of  men  have 
moved ; monotheism  and  polytheism  have 
battled  together;  great  teachers  have  risen 
like  Carlyle’s  Mahomet,  and  have  been  fol- 
lowed by  disciples,  and  after  a period  of 
advance  comes  a decline.  In  one  teacher  and 
another  we  find  great  resemblances  ; the  high 
faith,  the  ardent  spirit,  the  tender  and  sym- 
pathetic heart;  and  there  is  a great  likeness 
about  their  teaching  in  the  sphere  of  conduct. 


24 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


at  least  at  first  sight.  We  ask  ourselves  what 
these  resemblances  mean  ? Would  it  be 
possible  for  us  to  find  truth  by  taking  what 
the  Stoics  called  the  consensus  of  mankind, 
'the  “greatest  common  measure”  (if  that  old 
arithmetical  term  survives)  of  all  the  religions  ? 
Will  it  serve  us  best  to  take  what  is  common 
to  all  the  great  religious  teachers,  and  to 
eliminate  the  rest,  and  to  ask  whether  there  is 
any  difference  between  Buddha  and  Jesus 
Christ  and  the  Bab  ? and,  if  there  is,  whether 
it  matters  ? This  sort  of  question  is  being 
asked,  and  a quick  answer  given.  Yet,  it  is 
possible  to  ask,  also,  whether  it  is  not  the 
difference  that  chiefly  signifies.  Is  Chris- 
tianity made  by  what  it  shares  with  Buddhism, 
however  much  that  is  ? As  we  get  better 
acquaintance  with  the  two  systems  the 
common  element  seems  trifling  in  comparison 
with  the  gulf  between  the  two  outlooks  on 
life  and  the  world.  Is  what  men  have  counted 
the  very  gist  and  essence  of  Christianity  a 
mistake — the  faith  for  which  men  have  fought 
and  died  and  been  martyred? 

We  have  here  a fresh  call  to  verification. 
We  need  to  know  vastly  more  about 


STUDY  OF  RELIGIONS 


25 


Buddhism,  and  above  all  about  the  influence 
of  Buddhism  on  life,  about  the  actual  teach- 
ing of  Buddha  in  relation  to  current 
Buddhism,  about  the  type  of  character  that 
Buddhism  produces,  not  merely  among  its 
ascetics,  but  among  the  people  whom  they 
influence  or  do  not  influence,  and  a great 
many  more  such  matters.*  Similarly,  we  must 
give  ourselves  to  a fuller  historical  study  of 
Christianity,  not  so  much  with  controversy  as 
our  object  as  intelligence. 

Of  later  years,  the  study  of  religion  has 
reached  another  phase.  We  have  been  taken 
back  in  the  most  fascinating  way  to  origins, 
and  move  with  delight  and  interest  among 
golden  boughs,  and  totems,  and  thunder-birds, 
and  divine  kings,  and  heavenly  twins.  Many 
familiar  conceptions  have  had  their  pedigrees 
traced  back  to  very  lowly  spheres,  and  we 
are  told — rather  quickly — that  most  of  our 
religious  belief  comes  from  magic  and  the  like. 
It  is  not  altogether  proven  that  it  is  so,  nor 


* I should  like  to  recommend  here  the  book  of  Ekai  Kawa- 
guchi, a Japanese  Buddhist  monk,  entitled  Three  Years  in  Tibet. 
There  is  an  English  translation,  and  it  is  a most  interesting  and 
illuminating  work. 


26 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


is  it  shown  that,  if  a religious  usage  originated 
in  a magical  practice,  or  if  a religious  belief 
was  at  first  no  more  than  a superstition  of  the 
grossest  kind,  no  development  is  possible,  but 
that  religion  remains  as  it  began,  essentially 
magical.  We  have  to  remember  the  innate 
conservatism  of  our  race,  and  how  we  love 
to  associate  the  new  with  the  old  as  if  they 
were  one.  If  the  trellis  is  clearly  magic,  must 
the  vine  be  magic  ? In  ancient  Italy  the  vine 
grew  up  a living  elm:  is  this  our  analogy 
of  religion  and  magic  ? Or  is  it  safe  to  play 
with  analogies?  Is  it  certain  that  the  ram’s- 
horn  of  Folklore  (to  borrow  a simile  from  the 
preface  of  a great  work)  will  bring  down  the 
picturesque  and  ivy-clad  walls  of  the  Jericho 
we  call  religion?  Is  it  not  just  possible  that 
something  escapes  the  student  of  Folklore,  and 
that  things  are  not  so  easy  as  the  man  of  one 
subject  comes  to  think?  Once  again,  a 
challenge  to  verification. 

But  if  we  are  to  study  origins,  we  shall  have 
to  look  again  at  Christian  origins.  It  is 
notorious  that,  for  people  who  are  in  a hurry 
about  their  thinking,  the  Higher  Criticism, 
as  applied  to  the  Old  Testament,  has  shaken 


RELIGIOUS  ORIGINS 


27 


the  Christian  faith,  whether  they  are  pleased 
with  the  result  or  unhappy  about  it.  It  will 
be  more  serious  when  they  learn  what  it  is 
doing  with  the  New  Testament.  Yet  the 
general  principles  of  the  Higher  Criticism 
are  sound  and  scientific,  though  this  does  not 
imply  that  every  result  produced  by  those 
who  apply  these  principles  to  Old  or  New 
Testament,  is  finally  true,  even  if  many  critics 
agree  in  affirming  it.  It  is  clear  that  wrong 
results  from  sound  principles  will  not  survive 
sound  application  of  those  principles.  Here, 
as  elsewhere,  the  remedy  for  wrong  thinking 
is  strong  thinking,  deeper  thinking,  and  plenty 
of  it,  with  constant  reference  to  fact. 

So  far  we  have  been  dealing  with  the 
criticism  of  the  Christian  religion  from  the 
scientific  side.  The  whole  of  it  is  open  to 
the  suggestion  that  there  is  too  much  of  the 
laboratory  and  the  study  about  it — it  is  too 
like  Morphology  as  opposed  to  Biology;  it 
does  not  come  near  enough  to  life  and  the 
living  thing.  Side  by  side  with  the  man  of 
science  lives  another  type  of  man  altogether, 
who  does  not  understand  him,  and  does 
not  very  much  wish  to  understand  him. 


28 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


He  is  not  interested  in  Chemistry  or 
Geology — 

Enough  of  Science  and  of  Art; 

Close  up  these  barren  leaves; 

Come  forth,  and  bring  with  you  a heart 

That  watches  and  receives. 

He  knows  the  world  in  another  way 
altogether,  and  he  cannot  believe  that  anyone 
knows  it  as  well  as  he  does,  for  no  one  enjoys 
it  so  much. 

The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a passion:  the  tall  rock, 

The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood. 
Their  colours  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
An  appetite:  a feeling  and  a love. 

That  had  no  need  of  a remoter  charm. 

By  thought  supplied,  or  any  interest 
Unborrowed  from  the  eye. 

He  lives  in  the  beauty  of  the  world,  and,  when 
you  walk  beside  him  and  talk  to  him  about 
your  system,  economic  or  philosophic,  he 
listens  in  a way  with  the  ear  next  you, 
but  he  sees  something  quite  different.  The 
grey  willow  against  the  copper  beech — he  sees 
these,  and  they  both  speak  to  him  in  voices  too 
strong,  too  clear,  and  too  truthful  to  let  him 
care  about  anything  else — not  even  if  it  is 


THE  POET 


29 


a system  of  the  universe  that  explains  them. 
He  feels,  and  he  cannot  help  feeling,  the 
beauty  and  the  magic  of  a world  of  colour, 
the  movement  and  the  life  of  it;  and  these 
things  come  into  his  own  life  with  a power 
and  an  intensity  of  which  you  do  not  dream, 
and  yet  you  think  you  have  them  in  your 
system.  He  cannot  reply  to  your  questions; 
he  cannot  give  you  a reasonable  answer,  or 
argue  with  your  tools : his  major  premiss  is 
something  irreducible  to  formal  logic,  and  his 
conclusion  reaches  to  infinity  and  leaves  out 
everything  that  you  think  should  be  in.  As 
for  your  system,  of  what  service  is  a system 
when  a man  only  knows  a dozen  or  two  things 
in  the  world,  and  they  baffle  him  because, 
however  well  he  knows  them,  every  now  and 
then  they  break  out  into  new  doxologies ; 
there  is  no  end  to  their  inexhaustible  fertility 
of  meaning  and  joy.  Which  of  you  knows 
the  world?  You  with  the  system  and  the 
pedestrian  mind,  or  he  in  rapture  ? He  knows 
it  in  all  its  joy — 

The  beauty  and  the  wonder  and  the  power, 

The  shapes  of  things,  their  colours,  lights  and  shades, 

Changes,  surprises, — and  God  niade  it  all ! 


30 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


Your  system  is  a Christian  scheme  of  things, 
perhaps,  and  he  does  not  care  about  it;  you 
do  not  see  into  the  heart  and  life  of  things, 
he  says;  they  move  dimly  for  you,  in  a mist; 
they  burn  for  him,  and  blaze  and  are  bright 
— yes,  painful  sometimes,  but  it  is  worth  it. 
You  talk  about  shadows;  and  he  handles 
realities. 

He  too  turns  critic,  and,  like  a splendid 
pagan,  is  magnificent  in  denunciation  of  a 
drab  and  lack-lustre  Christianity,  a Christian 
Church  that  cramps  and  confines  the  spirit, 
that  deadens  everything  it  touches,  that  is 
afraid  of  this  and  of  that,  that  dares  not  try 
life,  does  not  realise,  and  does  not  know.  He 
has  reached  the  same  point  as  the  scientific 
man,  and  makes  the  same  reproach.  Our 
standards  of  truth  and  knowledge  are  too  low 
and  too  dull,  they  both  tell  us.  “You  must 
go  back  to  life,”  he  cries,  “ until  you  know 
it  from  within,  till  it  lives  and  moves  again 
for  you,  if  anything  you  say  is  ever  to  be 
worth  listening  to.”  He  has  put  the  same 
problem  of  verification  before  us  in  another 
way,  the  vast,  wide  range  of  reality,  the  awful 
and  wonderful  complex  of  things  which  we 


VERIFICATION 


31 


must  discover  by  feeling  them,  by  living  in 
them.  Verification  in  earnest. 

Attacked  on  two  sides,  by  those  who  tell 
him  that  he  does  not  know  and  by  those  who 
tell  him  that  he  does  not  feel,  the  Christian 
turns  ruefully  to  his  Master  to  see  what  has 
become  of  Him  in  all  this.  “We  have  be- 
lieved what  you  told  us;  we  have  quoted  it; 
and  they  sweep  it  aside  and  tell  us  we  neither 
know  nor  feel ! ” And  I think  that  if  we  could 
see  His  face,  there  would  be  something  of  a 
smile  upon  it — a suggestion  of  some  kindly 
amusement  at  such  anxiety.  “ Did  I not  tell 
you  the  same?”  He  asks,  “That  you  must 
search  and  know,  and  feel,  and  judge  for 
yourselves  ? ” For  Jesus  Christ  is  not  a 
teacher  to  be  quoted,  I think.  If  we  quote 
Him,  we  use  Him  amiss.  His  words  are 
nothing  till  they  come  somehow  out  of  our 
own  hearts  again,  as  they  did  from  Peter’s 
long  ago;  they  are  not  dead;  they  live.  Our 
critics  are  bringing  us  back  by  their  challenges 
to  know  Him  Whom  we  have  believed.  They 
are  bidding  us  test  and  examine  and  know 
ourselves  and  Him,  and  get  our  lessons  from 
life  and  fact.  It  is  His  own  method  after  all. 


32 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


In  the  lectures  that  follow,  that  is  to  be  our 
task.  Brokenly  and  strugglingly,  we  are  to 
try  all  the  same  to  get  some  glimpse,  some 
idea,  of  what  things  are.  Not  results  or 
conclusions  are  to  be  our  immediate  aim,  but 
a method,  an  approach  that  will  bring  us  into 
the  real  and  to  the  Master  of  it. 


LECTURE  II 

The  Use  of  Tradition 

IN  the  previous  lecture  we  tried  to  face  the 
great  challenge  made  to  the  Christian 
community  by  modem  thought  and 
modern  learning.  We  saw  that  our  religion  is 
challenged  along  many  lines.  The  man  of 
science,  the  economist,  the  historian,  the  critic 
of  the  Bible,  the  poet — ^all  bring  against  us 
an  accusation  that  we  do  not  take  pains 
enough  to  verify  what  we  tell  them  so  easily 
we  believe.  “ How  much  of  what  you  assert 
do  you  know?”  asks  one  school  of  critics. 
“How  much  of  it  do  you  feel?”  asks  the 
other.  We  are  driven  back  upon  a fresh 
study  of  the  facts. 

What  are  the  facts,  then,  upon  which  we 
rest?  What  are  the  facts  in  religious  ex- 
perience ? 

Whether  there  be  truth  in  the  Christian 
religion  or  not,  our  first  fact  is  a world-wide 
society,  with  a history  of  nineteen  centuries. 
It  touches  every  part  of  life,  conditions  and 

o 33 


34 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


suggests  our  thoughts,  shapes  us,  and  makes 
a background  for  us — ^and  all  this  in  ways 
that  are  beyond  our  reckoning  or  our  under- 
standing— so  that  we  can  hardly  think  of 
ourselves  apart  from  the  fact  of  the  Christian 
Church  and  its  influence.  As  we  look  at  it, 
we  are  challenged  again  with  a series  of 
questions.  Are  we  to  dismiss  all  this  ? Is 
there  nothing  for  us  in  the  long  story  of  the 
Christian  community  ? Is  it  possible  that  nine- 
teen centuries  of  human  experience  have 
nothing  to  say  to  the  heir  of  all  the  ages  ? 

The  souls  of  now  two  thousand  years 
Have  laid  up  here  their  toils  and  fears, 

And  all  the  earnings  of  their  pain, — 

Ah,  yet  consider  it  again! 

There  the  great  fact  of  the  Christian  Church 
stands,  and  we  have  to  ask  ourselves  if  we 
know  what  it  means.  We  shall  not  know 
what  it  means  till  we  have  grasped  how  it 
came  into  being,  and  what  is  the  inmost  sig- 
nificance of  its  doctrines  and  its  faith;  till 
we  understand  the  mind  of  its  great  sons  and 
daughters,  till  we  realise  something  of  their 
individuality,  who  they  are  that  have  held 
the  Christian  faith,  and  how  they  have  held 


THE  FACT  OF  THE  CHURCH 


35 


it.  We  have  to  think  out  our  attitude  to  the 
Christian  past,  remembering  that,  if  we  decide 
that  it  means  nothing,  the  decision  carries 
with  it  extraordinary  consequences.  For  it 
will  be  hard  to  say  what  can  mean  anything 
to  us  if  nineteen  centuries  of  the  intensest 
life  of  the  most  living  part  of  the  world  are 
to  go  for  nothing.  We  have  to  study  the 
Church  till  we  discover  how  the  Christian 
community  has  historically  reached  its  present 
position,  and  not  only  that,  but  how  it  still 
can  hold  it  as  it  does.  Have  Christian, 
thinkers  after  all  never  felt  the  improbability 
— the  incredibility — ^of  what  they  say  ? What 
is  it  that  has  brought  men  to  this,  and  still 
brings  them  ? Why  do  men  lean  so  to  the 
Gospel  ? Why  do>  they  love  it  as  they  do  ? 

This  means  that  we  have  to  begin  by 
turning  to  the  past  and  studying  its  contribu- 
tion — the  inherited  element  in  religious 
thought.  There  are  other  religions  beside 
Christianity;  and,  if  we  are  to  be  sure  of  our 
results,  we  shall  have  to  go  further  and  con- 
sider what  canons  we  have  for  judging  be- 
tween one  religion,  or  one  body  of  religious 
belief,  and  another. 


36 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


The  term  “religion”  is  used  with  some 
ambiguity  of  meaning.  It  may  connote  chiefly 
ritual  or  cult ; but  with  these  we  are  not 
primarily  concerned  for  our  present  purpose. 
It  may,  again,  suggest  a more  or  less  ordered 
body  of  belief ; or  it  may  mean  only  and  solely 
the  experience  that  men  actually  have  of  God 
— their  contact  with  Him,  direct  or  indirect, 
and  their  consciousness  of  Him  as  a factor 
in  life.  These  two  latter  senses  of  the  word 
touch  one  another  very  closely.  The  Chris- 
tian Church  rests,  deliberately  and  consciously, 
upon  its  own  experience  of  God  in  Christ,  and 
it  has  embodied  this,  so  far  as  it  could,  in 
its  creeds  and  dogmas.  And  these,  vathout 
refinements  in  the  ecclesiastical  way,  we  may 
group,  at  least  for  the  present,  as  the  Christian 
tradition.  The  term,  then,  will  be  used  in 
this  general  and  larger  sense  of  the  whole 
body  of  essential  Christian  belief,  as  com- 
monly held  by  all  sections  of  the  Christian 
community,  and  pointing  to  the  full  volume 
of  Christian  experience. 

It  is,  of  course,  obvious  that,  here  as  else- 
where, experience  and  the  formulation,  ex- 
pression or  explanation  that  it  receives,  are 


EXPERIENCE  AND  THEORY 


37 


distinct  things — that  is,  however  closely  they 
go  together,  we  can  think  of  them  apart,  and 
it  is  also  clear  that  one  of  them  is  more  im- 
portant than  the  other.  The  one  is  concerned 
with  action  primarily — with  what  a man  does 
in  daily  life,  with  the  spirit  in  which  he  lives 
and  in  which  he  prays,  in  which  he  manages 
his  dealings  with  man  and  God.  The  other  is 
more  closely  connected  with  speculation.  Of 
course,  it  is  here  as  in  other  spheres;  practice 
and  theory  act  and  react  on  each  other; 
dogma  and  religion  affect  each  other.  What 
a man  believes  conditions  what  he  does ; what 
he  does  conditions  what  he  believes.  Action 
is  impossible  without  some  working  theory, 
and  this  very  fact  drives  earnest  men  into 
speculation.  Even  the  man  of  science  is 
never  without  some  kind  of  tentative  working 
hypothesis,  even  when,  in  the  most  dis- 
interested and  objective  way,  he  is  in- 
vestigating fact;  he  is  looking  for  something, 
and  that  directs  his  search.  We  cannot  take 
the  tradition  of  the  Christian  Church — its 
body  of  belief  and  dogma — apart  from  its 
experience,  however  distinct  the  two  things 
may  be. 


38 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


At  the  same  time  we  have  to  remember  that 
the  spheres  of  action  and  speculation  are  still 
different.  Very  often  in  all  the  affairs  of  life 
we  find  that  the  man  who  is  master  in  the  one 
sphere  is  helpless  in  the  other;  and  so  it  is 
with  religious  life  and  thought.  Many  a man 
has  the  power  and  has  the  life,  who  can  give 
no  account  of  it,  or  who  can  only  account 
for  it  in  borrowed  terms,  crammed  with 
metaphor — terms  more  or  less  intelligible  to 
those  who  understand  the  metaphors,  and 
hopelessly  dark  for  others.  Similarly,  men  may 
be  adepts  in  the  speculative  treatment  of 
religion,  and  have  little  enough  of  the  real 
thing  in  the  way  of  power  or  life.  One  part 
of  our  task,  then,  will  be  to  make  sure  of  the 
relation  between  the  tradition  and  the  ex- 
perience behind  it,  for  it  may  be  that  the 
Church  has  not  quite  managed  a perfect 
account  and  explanation  of  its  own  life. 

The  Christian  Church,  in  its  history  as  in 
all  its  daily  transactions,  is  conscious  of  a 
life  related  in  a peculiar  way  to  the  historical 
facts  given  in  the  Gospels.  Of  this  life  it  has 
to  find  some  account;  and  this  account  must 
be  given  'with  reference  to  its  whole  knowledge 


DOGMA 


39 


of  the  world.  Otherwise  it  remains  more  or 
less  unknown  and  unintelligible.  This  is  the 
common  instinct  of  men.  Speculation  is 
native  to  us — “the  un-examined  life,”  Plato 
said,  “ is  un-live-able  for  a human  being.”*  We 
are  always  seeking  to  bring  the  whole  of  our 
experience  into  relation  with  itself,  that  we 
may  grasp  the  whole  of  life  and  the  universe, 
so  far  as  they  touch  us,  with  some  unity  and 
inward  coherence ; and  it  is  never  a merely 
academic  task,  the  impulse  of  an  idle  curiosity. 
It  is  intensely  practical.  The  Church  in  its 
dogma  endeavours  to  formulate  its  experience 
in  the  religious  sphere  in  connection  with  its 
general  experience  of  life  and  the  universe, 
and  of  the  laws  of  life  and  the  universe,  taken 
as  a whole,  and  it  does  this  with  the  practical 
aim  of  proceeding  thereby  to  some  larger 
working  theory  of  the  divine  order,  on  which 
to  base  action. 

In  common  life,  however,  there  is  a curious 
tendency  to  be  remarked  here,  in  striking 
contrast  with  the  ways  of  the  scientific  world. 
The  man  of  science  frames  hypotheses  to 


Apology,  38  A. 


40 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


account  for  the  facts  he  has  observed,  and 
to  enable  him  to  proceed  further;  but  he  is 
wedded  to  no  hypothesis.  When  new  facts 
— or  old  ones  better  known  — falsify  his 
hypothesis,  he  abandons  it  for  a new  one, 
which  in  turn  will  condition  his  work,  give  a 
new  direction  to  it,  and  call  his  attention 
steadily  to  some  group  or  type  of  facts.  But 
whatever  theory  he  forms  must  be  more  or 
less  immediately  verifiable  by  experiment. 
Now,  though  the  description  may  seem  fanci- 
ful, experiment,  one  might  say,  is  essentially 
listening  to  the  voice  of  Nature — sometimes 
by  long,  still,  and  silent  observation,  by  simple 
watching,  as  the  modem  student  of  birds 
watches  them  alive  and  at  liberty ; while  some- 
times the  experiment  takes  the  form  of  putting 
questions  to  Nature  and  then  carefully  catch- 
ing the  answer.  It  is  a helpful  thing  here  that 
one  may  put  the  same  question  to  Nature  as 
often  as  one  pleases;  and,  if  it  is  the  same 
question,  she  will  give  the  same  answer.  She 
will  not  tire  of  giving  the  answer,  as  some- 
times happens  when  you  put  the  same  question 
to  the  same  person  an  infinite  number  of 
times.  Thus  it  is  possible  to  be  sure  of  her 


THE  USE  OF  THEORY 


41 


answer;  and,  when  a great  many  people  put 
to  her  the  same  question,  it  is  possible  to  verify 
it.  Thus  by  repeated  and  intelligent  listening 
Science  comes  into  possession  of  a body  of 
established  facts. 

The  results  of  scientific  experiment  are 
patent  to  sense.  Of  course,  the  values  of 
these  results  are  not  so  patent.  They  require 
sometimes  a vastly  higher  power  of  intellect 
to  grasp  them  in  their  relation  to  one  another, 
and  to  the  whole  body  of  established  fact,  than 
is  required  to  make  the  experiments  from 
which  they  are  gained.  But  in  the  main  the 
results  of  scientific  experiment  are  patent  and 
clear,  and  they  lead  to  the  establishment  of 
facts  which  any  competent  person  can  verify. 
In  this  field  theories  are  theories  admittedly — 
working  hypotheses  to  use  or  discard  as  serves 
best.  A clear  distinction  is  drawn  between 
facts  established  by  experiment  and  what  are 
avowedly  theories;  and  that  distinction  per- 
mits a considerable  freedom  in  the  use  of 
hard  facts,  and  makes  the  progress  of  Science 
possible  in  virtue  of  clear  thinking. 

But  now  let  us  turn  to  the  other  side  and 
look  at  religion.  Here  we  step  into  a region 


42 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


of  great  difficulty,  for  we  have  to  do  with  the 
innermost  secrets  of  human  nature.  We 
really  know  very  little  yet  even  of  the  familiar 
five  senses ; still  less  can  we  claim  any 
satisfactory  knowledge  of  the  secrets  of 
psychology — will,  feeling,  emotion,  impulse, 
perception,  attention;  and  there  are  elements 
in  human  nature  still  more  perplexing  and 
still  less  explored.  Of  the  great  spiritual  ex- 
periences, such  as  love  or  sorrow,  it  is  hard  to 
give  even  an  approximately  true  account, 
except  perhaps  in  poetry.  Somewhere,  deep 
among  the  innermost  things  of  our  being,  is  the 
home  of  what  we  call  religion — in  a region 
where  experiments  seem  hardly  possible,  and, 
even  when  they  are  possible,  the  results  are 
peculiarly  difficult  to  understand  and  to 
relate  to  one  another.  Some  measure  of 
experiment  is,  of  course,  possible  here;  but 
here  more  than  elsewhere  we  require  the 
intelligent  working  of  independent  witnesses, 
independent  investigators,  correcting  them- 
selves and  correcting  one  another,  by  inde- 
pendent results  taken  over  long  periods  and 
wide  areas,  if  we  are  to  eliminate  accident  and 
error.  Yet  precisely  in  this  sphere  we  find 


THE  USE  OF  THEORY 


43 


sometimes  the  most  careless  use  of  theory  and 
fact  as  if  they  stood  on  the  same  footing. 
There  are  those  who  freely  use  their  own 
theories  in  this  way ; and  there  are  those  who 
lay  an  emphasis  on  the  authority  of  the 
Church,  which  seems  as  alien  to  scientific 
thinking.  To  the  former  class  we  scarcely 
need  to  attend,  but  we  have  to  consider  the 
stress  laid  on  Authority  and  to  ask  how  far 
it  is  legitimate. 

One  reason  lies  ready  to  hand.  It  is  partly 
because  of  the  great  difficulty  of  the  problem 
that  lies  before  the  individual — because  of 
the  vast  issues  bound  up  with  it  and  the  short 
space  within  which  it  has  to  be  solved — 
because  he  feels  so  acutely  his  limitations. 
He  stands  in  a world  of  many  minds,  none 
of  them  quite  rigid,  however  rigid  they  may 
seem — all  of  them  in  reality  played  upon  by 
shifting  currents  of  thought  and  feeling,  and 
conditioned  by  sterner  variations  in  ex- 
perience. Nothing  that  he  can  see  stands 
immovable  and  immutable,  and  he  asks  for 
something  that  is  permanent.  For  he  realises 
that  he  is  face  to  face  with  a practical  problem. 
He  has  a life  to  live  which  is  hurrying  past 


44 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


him  faster  and  faster — a.  life  which  he  would 
like  to  call  his  own,  but,  as  he  thinks  of  it,  he 
seems  to  himself  more  and  more  to  be  a mere 
spectator,  so  quickly  life  goes,  and  so  little 
does  it  leave.  He  is  hindered  from  developing 
his  opportunities  by  failure  within  himself. 
Evil  round  about  him  is  challenging  his 
energies,  but  they  are  thwarted  and  deadened 
by  evil  within;  and  meantime  he  is  swept 
down-stream,  more  and  more  conscious  of 
failure — yes,  and  of  ignorance  of  himself  and 
his  own  nature.  How  is  he  tO'  use  life,  to 
overcome  the  inner  weakness  that  makes  the 
outward  inefficiency^ — in  short,  to  be  what  he 
feels  dimly  he  should  be,  and  might  be, 
somehow,  if  he  only  knew  how? 

The  difficulty  of  life  lies,  after  all,  not  so 
much  in  the  region  of  speculation  as  of  action 
— that  is,  unless  a man  is  content  to  drift 
through  his  days  and  nights,  eating,  sleeping, 
and  thoughtlessly  putting  his  hand  to  what 
occurs,  without  purpose  or  outlook.  There 
may  be  perhaps  an  art  or  science  of  war — 
or  perhaps  Socrates  would  call  it,  like  rhetoric 
and  cookery,  a mere  knack.  In  the  last  resort 
many  arts  and  sciences  have  a larger  element 


RECOURSE  TO  EXPERIENCE 


45 


of  knack  in  them  than  human  pride  would 
wish  to  recognise.  However,  if  there  is  an  art 
or  science  of  war,  it  is  not  to  that  that  we 
should  liken  life,  but  rather  to  the  conduct 
of  a siege — ^an  affair  of  sore  straits  and 
cramped  means,  spiritual,  intellectual,  and 
moral,  and  the  enemy  always  at  the  gates. 

In  all  such  cases  a man  has  a tendency  to 
fall  back  on  the  experience  of  other  men. 
The  instinct  is  a sound  one.  Whether  one 
consider  the  history  of  inventions,  of  art,  of 
literature,  or  of  politics  and  freedom,  the 
inheritance  at  times  seems  everything.  On 
what  background  does  a man  work  ? What 
depth  of  leaf  mould  is  there  in  which  literature 
may  root  itself  and  flower  ? The  answer  often 
determines  the  value  in  each  case.  In  litera- 
ture, for  instance,  Goethe  said  that  “ to  make 
an  epoch  in  the  world,  two  conditions  are 
notoriously  essential — a good  head  and  a 
good  inheritance.”*  The  man  who  will 
emphasise  himself  and  swing  clear  of  the  con- 
ventions of  the  race  is  not  so  often  the  real 
genius  as  the  crank  or  the  pretender.  The 


• Eckermann,  Conversations  with  Goethe,  2 May,  1824. 


46 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


inherited  experience  of  mankind,  scarcely 
formulated,  and  reduced  to  no  very  valid  rules, 
is  invaluable  to  the  real  artist,  who  absorbs 
it  he  cannot  tell  how  or  when.  It  saves  him 
from  gratuitous  mistakes,  from  waste  of  mind, 
from  eccentricity,  from  disastrous  side-tracks, 
and  by  its  gentle  pressure  turns  him  in  that 
direction  where,  if  he  follow  his  genius,  he 
will  instinctively  know  when  to  overstep  con- 
vention and  so  to  extend  the  experience  he 
inherits,  and  to  enlarge  in  a permanent  and 
true  way  the  faculties  of  the  race.  In  fact, 
much  as  the  individual  is — and  at  times  he 
in  his  turn  seems  to  be  everything — he  is 
most  when  he  realises  and  uses  the  solidarity 
of  human  experience  in  that  sphere  in  which 
he  has  to  work. 

The  experience  of  the  race  and  the  freedom 
of  the  individual — these,  then,  are  the  two 
great  things  for  the  man  who  takes  life 
seriously  in  any  sphere — neither  without  the 
other,  but  the  combination  of  individual 
experiment  with  inherited  experience. 

Let  us  take  an  easy  illustration.  Man’s 
struggle  with  Nature  began  far  earlier  than 
any  date  to  which  historians  can  take  us  back; 


THE  BOAT-BUILDER 


47 


and  long  after  it  began,  and  yet  long  before 
we  have  anything  we  can  call  History,  the 
first  boat  was  made.  We  have  to  use  con- 
jecture here,  but  we  have  some  evidence.  The 
man  who  made  it  was  one  who  watched 
Nature.  The  tree  trunk  floated,  he  saw,  while 
the  stone  sank;  and  he  took  in  these  facts 
and  thought  he  might  use  them.  But  the 
trunk  had  to  be  cleared  of  its  branches,  and 
after  a while  it  occurred  to  him  that  if  it  were 
hollow  he  might  convey  himself  and  his 
belongings — human  and  other — with  more 
safety  and  at  least  drier.  So  he  thought  out  a 
new  application  of  fire — that  treasured  dis- 
covery of  his  race,  so  hard  to  get,  so 
important  to  keep;  and  then,  after  a long 
series  of  failures  perhaps,  with  fire  and  stone 
he  made  his  dug-out,  and  launched  it  with  the 
aid  of  his  friends.  And  then,  to  their  great 
amusement,  the  tree  trunk,  afloat  and  free, 
turned  over  and  resolutely  floated  upside 
down.  But  the  man  would  not  be  beaten.  He 
hauled  the  wretched  trunk  out  of  the  water, 
and  at  last,  by  a heart-breaking  course  of 
thought  and  experiment  and  disappointment, 
achieved  a new  and  a great  thing — a tree 


48 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


trunk  hollowed  within  and  shaped  without  to 
just  those  curves  and  just  that  build  (to  use  a 
later  word)  that  would  enable  it  to  stay  right 
side  up  and  hinder  its  own  progress  least. 
Human  life  might  depend  upon  both  these 
qualifications.  So  rose  the  most  wonderful 
and  fascinating  of  human  trades,  to  which 
man  was  to  owe  some  of  his  most  amazing 
victories  over  the  world.  The  man  who  made 
the  first  boat  in  any  tribe  was  of  the  type 
to  which  mankind  owes  most — the  listener  to 
the  voice  of  God  in  fact  and  Nature.  He  was 
done  with  anticipating;  he  would  have  the 
fact,  and  he  put  himself  to  the  pains  of  letting 
the  fact  assert  itself — patient  enough  to  ask 
again  and  again  till  he  understood  what 
Nature  meant,  and  then  using  it  gloriously. 
Back  to  him  and  his  boat  we  can  trace  the 
story  of  shipbuilding,  and  from  him  again 
downwards  to  onr  Mauretania s and  Olympics  ; 
and  at  no  stage  has  the  past  with  its  triumphs 
been  irrelevant — nothing  once  gained  was 
lost,  and  it  is  only  as  men  build  their  ships 
true  to  the  discoveries  made  all  the  way  along 
from  the  first  dug-out  that  they  build  aright. 
The  past  is  superseded  indeed ; the  Mauretania 


THE  BOAT-BUILDER 


49 


is  worth  many  dug-outs,  but  in  her  the  dug- 
out  lives  still  in  a more  glorious  life.  It  is 
the  combination  of  experience  and  experi- 
ment. 

So,  too,  when,  at  a later  day,  seas  were  to 
be  navigated,  the  sailor  did  the  same  thing. 
The  quiet  man  who  would  watch  and  listen 
learned  how  to  shape  his  course.  Without 
chart  or  compass,  without  even  an  anchor, 
how  was  he  to  know  where  he  was,  to  find 
his  way,  to  save  his  ship?  He  looked  and  he 
listened.  The  stars  spoke  to  him,  and  he 
went  to  his  journey’s  end  and  came  back 
again  because  he  had  the  genius  to  listen  to 
them — ^and  to  sea  and  winds  and  coastlines 
and  currents.  The  moods  of  the  sea  and  the 
face  of  the  sky  were  never  idle  for  him;  and 
what  he  learned,  he  taught,  and  navigation 
developed.  “A  new  boat  and  old  rocks,” 
says  the  grim  Highland  proverb.  The  old 
perils  remain,  but  the  sting  is  drawn  from 
them  if  you  will  use  what  your  father  told 
you.  Once  more  it  is  the  experience  of  the 
race  and  the  experiment  of  the  individual. 

When  we  turn  to  the  sphere  of  religion,  it 
is  natural  to  expect  that  the  same  method  will 
4 


5° 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


still  serve  us  best,  for  there  is  a certain  unity 
in  our  acquaintance  with  the  universe.  Life 
is  one,  however  many  its  aspects  and  faculties. 
Nature  will  speak  to  us  here  also,  if  we  will 
listen.  But  we  must  be  careful  not  to  be 
in  a hurry.  It  is  here  that  hurry  seems  most 
natural  to  the  human  mind  and  most  disas- 
trous. How  intricate  are  the  relations  of 
experience  and  the  formulation  given  to  it, 
we  have  seen.  With  the  most  earnest  passion 
for  truth,  men  may  misconceive  it  and  mis- 
represent it ; and  in  religion  we  may  be  misled 
by  the  very  highest  tradition  available  to  us. 
V erification  here  is  slow  work  and  very  hard ; 
yet  it  is  possible,  if  we  are  willing  to  avail 
ourselves  of  the  accumulated  evidence  of  man- 
kind, with  all  the  care  and  sympathy  needed 
to  understand  it  aright. 

So  far  as  we  can  trace  the  history  of  man’s 
conception  of  God,  it  has  grown  very  slowly, 
and  in  a very  .simple  way.  It  would  be  a 
wonderful  thing  to  re-capture,  if  we  could, 
the  very  thoughts  of  those  remote  ancestors 
of  ours  who  first  formulated  their  experience 
of  Something-Not-Themselves,  and  to  trace 
how,  age  by  age,  men  re-shaped  their  ideas 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RELIGION 


51 


of  the  great  Environing,  as  they  watched  how 
thought  re  acted  on  life,  and  life  on  thought. 
The  real  progress  has  been  made  by  attention 
to  fact.  This  and  that,  men  said,  their  fathers 
had  told  them,  but  quite  other  was  the  voice 
of  life;  God  was  not  what  was  said,  but  what 
He  showed  Himself  to  be,  what  He  revealed 
in  the  growth  of  moral  and  social  ideas  and 
ideals.  Thus  in  Homer  the  traditional  gods 
are  clearly  on  a lower  moral  plane  than  the 
heroes  men  made  from  their  experience  of 
their  fellow-men.  It  is  plain  to  us  in  looking 
back  that  Homer’s  gods  were  outgrown  and 
must  yield  their  place  sooner  or  later.  The 
attack  made  by  Xenophanes,  Euripides,  and 
Plato  on  traditional  religion  in  the  light  of 
new  experience  of  righteousness  is  the  great 
instance  in  Classical  literature  and  history  of 
the  progress  made  by  those  who  inherit  and 
examine  and  reflect.  God  was  re-interpreted 
in  the  light  of  life.  Strange  that  what  men 
are  is  so  often  a better  guide  to  the  nature 
of  God  than  what  they  say  about  Him ! 

Progress  in  the  spiritual  region  depends  on 
the  result  reached  by  the  individual,  when  he 
is  not  merely  an  individual  but  a joint-heir 


52 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


of  the  race,  and  will  use  his  inheritance  with- 
out losing  his  personality.  Robinson  Crusoe 
on  his  island  is  hardly  a type  of  the  human 
soul.  We  are  too  individualistic — too  apt  to 
forget  that  Robinson  Crusoe  had  an  axe  and 
a number  of  other  fascinating  things  brought 
from  England,  all  of  which  implied  humanity, 
and  the  long  history  of  civilisation.  He  had 
also  a Bible  in  English,  we  may  remember, 
which  again  implied  a long  history  of 
religion.  The  individual  inherits  all  this — 
he  is  made  by  it;  it  is  in  him;  and  sound 
thinking  requires  the  recognition  of  this  fact 
also,  as  well  as  all  other  relevant  facts,  in  the 
fulness  of  its  meaning.  Without  the  religious 
history  of  the  race  behind  us,  not  one  of  us 
is  likely  to  achieve  anything,  either  in  his  own 
religious  life  or  in  his  thinking.  If  he  starts 
afresh,  he  is  most  like  an  artist  who  begins 
without  perspective,  and  ignores  all  that  has 
been  learned  and  felt  of  colour.  Not  even 
genius  could  thrive  on  such  a plan;  and  it 
is  perhaps  worth  while  remarking  that  one 
of  the  most  significant  factors  in  genius,  and 
one  of  those  least  recognised,  is  its  infinite 
capacity  for  learning  in  patience  and  humility. 


EXPERIENCE  AND  PROGRESS  53 

however  high  it  may  soar  afterwards — its 
power  of  combining  docility  with  indepen- 
dence. Independence  without  that  docility  is 
the  mark  of  the  fool,  though  he  does  not 
always  recognise  it.  First-hand  experience 
of  life,  of  course,  we  ask  of  poet  and  painter, 
and  of  the  man  of  religion,  but  in  the  first 
instance  within  the  limits  of  the  inheritance. 

When  we  speak  of  our  religious  and 
spiritual  inheritance,  we  must  think  not  merely 
of  those  whO'  say  they  have  the  Voice  of  God, 
but  of  some  who  make  no  such  claim — not 
merely  of  one  Church,  but  of  many,  and  of 
many  that  no  Church  at  all  will  recognise. 
The  whole  spiritual  history  of  man  is  the 
background  on  which  we  have  to  work. 
There  are  the  great  historic  religions  of  the 
world,  and  within  Christendom  the  great 
Churches  and  societies  and  movements — ^and 
none  of  all  these  is  irrelevant.  For,  after  all, 
“the  Church”  is  essentially  the  tradition,  and 
the  tradition  has  tO'  be  transcended;  while 
to  the  man  who  is  in  earnest,  every  tradition 
is  of  value,  and  none  is  finally  binding. 
Church  or  no  Church,  it  is  to  the  highest 
experience  in  the  sphere  with  which  we  are 


54 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


concerned  that  we  have  to  look,  and  it  is 
not  till  we  have  found  that,  that  we  may 
dismiss  anything  as  irrelevant,  and  even  then 
we  must  not  dismiss  it  too  abruptly.  For 
most  of  us  to-day  there  is  little  question  that  it 
is  in  the  area  of  Christian  thinking  that  the 
highest  results  in  thought  and  character  are 
to  be  observed;  and,  when  we  find  these, 
we  are  right — indeed,  we  are  bound — to  ask 
how  they  have  been  developed.  It  is,  of 
course,  true  that  this  conclusion  is  questioned. 
Other  standards  of  morality,  by  which  to 
test  character,  are  proposed,  but  they  are 
rarely  as  new  as  those  who  advocate  them 
imagine ; often  they  are  obsolete — blind 
alleys  long  since  labelled  and  known  to  lead 
nowhere. 

To  recapitulate  the  three  points  we  have 
reached,  we  have  remarked,  first,  the  soli- 
darity of  the  race,  and  the  dependence  of  the 
present,  and  with  it  of  the  future,  upon  the 
past  and  its  experience.  In  the  next  place,  we 
have  seen  that  progress  depends  upon  the 
right  and  wise  use  of  the  inherited  experience 
by  the  individual,  conscious  of  his  respon- 
sibility at  once  to  maintain  and  to  advance 


RECAPITULATION 


55 


what  he  has  inherited  ;*  and,  at  the  same  time, 
that  in  every  sphere  of  human  activity  it  is 
the  highest  achievement  that  counts,  and  must 
be  our  starting-place  for  further  progress; 
that,  if  to  ignore  experience  is  always  folly, 
it  is  still  more  folly  to  ignore  the  highest 
experience  available.  In  the  third  place, 
embodied  in  the  tradition  of  the  Christian 
Church  or  Churches,  and  in  the  teaching  and 
dogma  of  the  non-Christian  religions,  we  have 
a mass  of  religious  experience  which  may  be 
of  the  highest  value  to  us,  if  we  take  the 
pains  to  understand  it;  for  here  we  touch 
the  life  of  the  human  race  at  its  very  highest 
and  most  intense.  The  great  religions  express 
the  most  earnest  minds  among  those  races 
of  man  which  are  most  endowed  with 
insight  and  most  trained  in  variety  of  life. 
They  come  not  from  the  backward  peoples, 
but  from  the  races  with  long  histories,  embody- 
ing every  interest  that  race  or  nation  can 


* The  Church,  wrote  Principal  Rainy  in  1867,  “ is  compelled  to 
submit  afresh  to  the  cross-questioning  of  the  ever-changing,  ever- 
moving,  Providence  of  God.  She  is  obliged  to  let  drop  the  mere 
habits  of  her  history,  which  suffice  no  longer.  . . . The  Church 
of  Christ  has  no  liberty  to  become  the  slave  even  of  its  own  his- 
tory.” {Life,  i.,  pp.  176,  177.) 


56 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


know,  and  in  every  one  of  the  great  religions 
the  signs  are  manifest  which  tell  of  roots  deep 
in  the  past.  In  each  case  the  highest  thought 
of  a gifted  race  has  been  turned  upon  what 
supremely  matters  to  every  man.  For  those 
who  know  it  best — who  know  it  from  within — 
the  Christian  faith  stands  apart  from  all  other 
religions  in  a place  of  its  own,  with  a future 
— ^and  a future  which,  we  believe,  will  not 
be  a mere  repetition  of  the  past.  The  rest 
of  this  lecture  will  be  devoted  to  a short  dis- 
cussion of  principles  which  may  enable  us 
to  judge  between  one  set  of  religious  traditions 
and  another,  and  (I  hope)  to  see  some  ground 
for  the  preference  given  to  the  Christian  faith. 

There  are  three  questions  which  we  may 
ask  about  any  religion — quite  simple  ques- 
tions. What  will  it  do  for  you?  What  will 
it  do  to  protect  other  people  against  you? 
How  far  does  it  hold  open  the  door  for  the 
future  ? 

In  answering  such  questions  two  ways  may 
be  taken.  We  may  go  to  sacred  books,  and 
compare  the  precepts  of  the  great  religious 
teachers  and  the  proverbs  bearing  on  moral 
matters  that  are  current  among  the  various 


THE  STUDY  OF  RELIGIONS 


57 


peoples.  Or  we  may  go  to  the  people  them- 
selves and  study  their  lives  and  see  how  far 
the  religion  is  practically  operative  there — 
what  it  gives  them,  what  it  does  to  protect 
the  weak  from  them,  what  it  does  to  safeguard 
the  future — ^and  with  what  force  and  power 
it  does  these  things.  We  shall  find  sometimes 
that  the  popular  proverb  has  more  vitality 
than  the  religious  aphorism  or  principle,  and 
yet  that  even  so  a proverb  has  often  enough 
to  do  to  maintain  its  own  life,  without  dynamic 
to  spare  to  guide  and  quicken  the  lives  of 
men  and  women.  We  must  keep  always  in 
close  contact  with  actual  life,  and  work  out 
our  problem  with  progressively  intense  study 
of  individual  character,  without  neglecting, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  notes  of  the  larger 
or  more  organised  society.  We  must  make 
it  our  concern  to  go  slowly  about  our  work — 
especially  when  we  reach  the  stage  of  making 
statements — till  we  have  grasped  the  fulness 
of  the  fact.  In  religion  a fact  is  extremely 
hard  to  convey  in  its  fulness  by  any  words 
available;  and  then  we  have  to  realise  that 
other  people  use  the  same  words  and  mean 
something  very  different.  The  content  of  the 


58 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


word  varies  immensely.  Even  when  we  take 
so  simple  and  obvious  a word  as  (let  us  say) 
“blue,”  no  one  can  tell  what  its  exact  value 
is — it  makes  all  the  difference  whether  it  is 
applied  to  a blue-bottle  fly,  the  summer  sky, 
or  a preparation  for  the  laundry.  The  word 
“Father”  is  applied  to  Godin  many  religions, 
and  its  compass  varies  as  widely  as  “blue” 
in  the  three  instances  I have  suggested.  It 
is  clear  that  we  have  to  go  beyond  what  people 
say,  and  study  what  they  mean,  and  how  much 
they  mean  it. 

Some  little  time  ago.  Professor  Gilbert 
Murray,  of  Oxford,  said  that  the  great  danger 
in  literature  was  reading  “with  a slack  imagi- 
nation.” This  is  always  the  danger,  whether 
one  is  criticising  a book  or  dealing  with 
human  character  in  any  form  or  race.  Know- 
ledge, to  be  anything  at  all  beyond  conceit  and 
delusion,  must  be  a thing  of  passion  and 
intensity.  It  is  not  easy  to  understand  any 
man  in  his  fulness — character  is  so  com- 
plicated to  begin  with,  and  in  the  next  place 
it  is  never  finally  fixed.  If  we  are  to  study  an 
author,  there  is  only  one  way,  and  this  Carlyle 
summed  up  in  writing  of  Novalis  for  an 


THE  TRUE  WAY  IN  CRITICISM  59 


English  public  very  doubtful  about  such 
foreigners : 

“ The  most  profitable  employment  any  book 
can  give  them  is  to  study  honestly  some 
earnest,  deep-minded,  truth-loving  Man,  to 
work  their  way  into  his  manner  of  thought, 
till  they  see  the  world  with  his  eyes,  feel  as  he 
felt  and  judge  as  he  judged,  neither  believing 
nor  denying,  till  they  can  in  some  measure 
so  feel  and  judge.”* 

When  we  have  taken  such  a course  with 
any  religious  teacher,  our  acceptance  or  re- 
jection, our  belief  or  denial,  will  at  least  be 
defensible.  Is  it  too  much  to  suggest  that 
such  measure  is  only  seldom  given  to  that 
wonderful  series  of  “ earnest,  deep-minded, 
truth-loving  Men  ” who  have  made  the 
Christian  Church,  and  handed  down  to  us  its 
tradition — the  embodiment  of  the  religious 
experience  of  the  peoples  and  of  the  men  in 
nineteen  centuries  who  were  best  qualified 

* Dr.  Edward  Caird,  in  a lecture  on  Carlyle,  said  much  the 
same  thing- ; We  must  “ let  his  way  of  thinking  [a  great  author’s] 
permeate  into  our  minds,  until  it  becomes  part  of  their  very  sub- 
stance ” ; till  then,  our  criticism  “will  be  wanting  in  sympathy, 
and  it  will  rather  tend  to  defend  us  against  his  spirit  than  enable 
us  to  appreciate  it.” 


6o 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


for  such  experience,  even  if  most  conscious  of 
their  own  disqualifications? 

Our  task  is  the  open-hearted  study  of  the 
Christian  religion,  with  our  three  questions 
in  mind;  and  this  lecture  shall  end  with  the 
suggestion  of  some  lines  along  which  our 
study  may  be  carried  out. 

First  of  all,  I would  suggest  the  con- 
sideration of  the  Christian  tradition  by  refer- 
ence to  the  world  outside  Christ — ^and  that  is 
not  easy.  Most  of  us  have  no  idea  at  all  what 
the  world  is  without  Christ;  He  is  so  deeply 
involved  in  every  aspect  of  the  world  we  know, 
so  interwoven  with  every  fibre  of  its  being. 
Yet  there  are  two  regions  where  we  can  see 
the  world  without  Christ.  There  is  the  ancient 
world,  with  the  fascinating  story  of  the  Greek 
and  Roman  civilisations  in  which  our  own 
is  rooted.  And  again  there  is  the  modem 
world  of  Africa  and  Asia — the  pagan  world 
of  to-day.  To  know  either  is  the  task  of  a 
lifetime,  it  may  sometimes  seem  to  the  weary 
student,  and  yet  certain  things  are  plain 
enough. 

For  example,  deplorable  as  things  are  in 
European  and  American  society,  they  are  bad. 


SOCIETY  WITHOUT  CHRIST 


6i 


nevertheless,  with  the  continual  correction  of 
a Christian  background.  There  are  men  and 
women  leavening  these  societies  in  whom 
bums  a passionate  devotion  to  the  person  of 
Jesus  Christ  and  His  ideals  for  mankind  and 
for  the  individual.  There  is  the  public  recog- 
nition (whatever  it  is  worth)  of  religion,  and 
there  is  in  all  educated  persons  some  slight 
knowledge — very  vague  and  inaccurate  as  it 
may  be — of  the  principles  of  that  religion 
which  touches  their  lives,  if  nowhere  else, 
in  most  of  their  weddings  and  funerals.  But 
imagine  the  background  removed,  and  in- 
dustrial enormities,  flagrant  cruelty,  and  open 
uncleanness,  continuing  unchecked,  and  gain- 
ing rather  than  losing  in  volume,  as  they 
would.  Even  with  the  assistance  of  Leopold 
II.  and  his  Belgians,  it  will  be  hard  for  any- 
one without  special  knowledge  to  imagine 
what  things  were  tolerated  in  ancient  society 
— or  are  tolerated  in  India — in  civilised  com- 
munities, that  is — and  in  neither  case  with 
much  disapproval.  Some  things  are  ignored, 
and  others  are  defended;  and  that  makes 
an  unspeakable  difference.  Good  natures  and 
kind  hearts  there  were  in  the  ancient  world, 


62 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


but  it  is  remarkable  how  little  influence  they 
had.*  Classical  scholars  and  modern  mission- 
aries rarely  tell  all  they  know  about  pagan 
society.  Few  ask  about  the  condition  of 
slaves,  for  instance,  in  the  mines  of  Attica 
while  Pericles  was  the  chief  man  of  the  State; 
and  the  terrible  want  of  mercy  that  caste 
involves  is  not  understood.  If  you  know  the 
questions  to  ask  of  returned  missionaries,  they 
will  tell  you.  Sometimes  they  tell  you  things 
without  noticing  that  they  are  doing  so,  and 
such  evidence  is  always  significant. 

Then  we  must  think  about  religion  without 
Christ.  Here,  of  course,  we  meet  people  who 
go  at  once  to  the  Diary  of  Marcus  Aurelius  or 
Sir  Edwin  Arnold’s  Light  of  Asia — documents 
of  very  different  value.  But  there  are  sounder 
works  on  Buddha,  with  less  glamour,  while 
Marcus  Aurelius  was  in  any  case  an  ex- 
ceptional man.  Plutarch’s  book  On  Isis  and 
Osiris  is  a much  better  guide  to  the  real  ideas 
of  ancient  religion.  Two  features  stand  out 
in  most  non-Christian  religions — the  world’s 
quarrel  with  God,  and  the  awful  touch  of 

* Think  of  the  gladiatorial  shows  and  the  kind  and  humane 
gien  who  gave  them, 


RELIGION  WITHOUT  CHRIST  63 


superstition.  Buddha  and  the  Stoic  both 
knew  the  world  was  made  amiss,  and,  recon- 
ciliation being  practically  impossible,  they 
urged  renouncing  the  world.  The  Stoic,  of 
course,  with  his  love  of  paradox,  simul- 
taneously maintained  the  beauty  and  rightness 
of  the  world,  but,  none  the  less,  did  his  utmost 
to  nerve  himself  to  endure  it.  Buddha,  it 
might  be  said,  beyond  all  religious  teachers, 
takes  the  worth  out  of  life.  If  it  is  urged  that 
the  mediaeval  monk  also  said  that  “ the  world 
is  very  evil,”*  none  the  less,  the  hymn,  in 
which  the  phrase  comes,  ends  with  ‘‘  Jerusalem 
the  Golden,”  while  the  Stoic  ended  with  reso- 
lution into  elements  and  Buddha  at  best  with 
Nirvana.  The  plain  fact  is  that,  in  the  long 
run,  despair  is  at  the  heart  of  every  religion 
without  Christ;  and  if  man  or  woman  is  to 
get  through  the  world  at  all,  it  must  be  by 
the  hardening  or  deadening  of  the  more 
sensitive  parts  of  human  nature.  Marcus 
Aurelius’  Diary  is  a sort  of  breviary  of  despair. 

Epicurus  and  Nietzsche  have  a different 
story  to  tell,  but  their  messages  have  the  same 


* To  be  fair  to  Bernard  of  Morlaix,  he  did  not  say  this.  Hora 
tiovissima  tempora  pessima  is  rather  different, 


64 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


defects.  They  are  not  for  people  who  outlive 
youth,  or  who  have  it  in  them  to  love  in  any 
passionate  way;  and  as  old  age  and  love  are 
obvious  elements  in  human  life,  it  is  a damag- 
ing criticism  upon  a philosophy  to  say  that 
it  does  not  cover  them.  Besides,  Plato  dealt 
with  Nietzsche  long  ago  in  the  Gorgias,  and 
Epicurus  really  asks  more  self-discipline  than 
youth  or  voluptuary  would  wish  to  practise. 

In  the  fifth  lecture  I shall  have  to  deal  with 
another  aspect  of  religion  outside  Christ — with 
polytheism  in  faith  and  cult  and  daily  life — 
and  to  call  your  attention  to  its  effects  upon 
human  nature. 

In  the  next  place  we  have  to  study  Christian 
society  to  see  what  has  been  done  for  men  by 
Jesus  Christ,  and  what  is  being  done.  We 
will  not  blink  the  weakness  and  distractedness 
of  Christian  society,  but  as  weakness  and  dis- 
tractedness are  not  features  peculiar  to  it, 
we  will  look  elsewhere  for  the  factors  that 
differentiate.  Two  lectures  in  this  course  will 
be  given  to  this. 

Several  things  will  be  necessary.  We  shall 
need  to  give  a closer  attention  to  Christian 
phrase,  neither  surrendering  to  its  appeal  of 


CHRISTIAN  PHRASE 


6S 


old  association,  nor  .rejecting  it  as  merely 
conventional.  Here  again  we  have  to  guard 
against  the  slack  imagination,  and  to  wrestle 
with  the  word,  and  with  the  man  who  uses  it, 
till  we  grasp  what  it  is  intended  to  express. 
Over  and  over  again  we  shall  find  that  the 
difficulty  is  that  it  was  an  endeavour  to  put 
a wholly  new  experience  into  old  phrase.  Old 
categories  and  old  conceptions  have  received 
a new  content,  far  too  great  for  them.  The 
Church  has  treated  its  words  like  Humpty- 
Dumpty  in  Alice  Through  the  Looking-Glass  ; 
the  word  has  had  its  own  associations  and 
preferences,  and  the  Church  forces  it,  in  spite 
of  all  these,  to  convey  an  idea  it  never  meant 
to  suggest — sometimes  an  idea  of  glowing  joy. 
And  then,  when  the  word  has  learned  its  new 
work,  dull  folk  use  it  till  an  impatient  age 
supposes  it  never  meant  anything  but 
flabby  make-believe.*  Really,  if  the  words 
are  to  be  understood,  our  best  plan  is  to 
repeat  the  experience  which  called  them  forth. 

We  shall  have  to  study  the  involuntary 
convert — Si  person  to  be  found  in  many 

* Perhaps  one  might  instance  such  words  as  faith,  love,  sub. 
stitution,  holy. 

5 


66 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


societies  to-day,  a man  well  worth  our  atten- 
tion. He  is  of  the  type  that  does  not  mean 
to  be  converted — too  candid  to  take  things 
without  examination,  too  true  to  move  quickly 
— and  then,  like  the  Pearl  Merchant  in  the 
parable,  after  all  his  experience  of  the  beauti- 
ful and  true,  he  finds  something  that  goes 
beyond  all — he  gets  outside  his  own  old 
range,  finds  a new  joy;  and  life,  without  his 
intending  it  or  expecting  it,  is  a new  thing. 
But  if  we  are  to  understand  him,  it  will  not 
be  with  the  slack  imagination. 

Above  all,  we  shall  have  to  consecrate  our- 
selves to  a new  and  special  study  of  Jesus 
Christ — His  ideas  and  principles,  and,  what 
is  vastly  more.  Himself  and  His  personality. 

Is  His  a religion  that  closes  the  door  to 
the  future?  Or  does  it  not  rather  hold  the 
door  open?  In  a great  passage,  St.  Paul 
speaks  of  Christ  as  being  God’s  “Yes” — 
“however  many,”  he  says,  “the  promises  of 
God  are,  in  Him  is  the  Yes.”  The  Christian 
religion  is  a religion  of  Yes,  and  all  other 
religions,  in  last  resort,  are  religions  of  No. 
Paul  sees  in  Him  the  fulfilment  of  all  God’s 
promises — promises  written  in  the  books  of 


“IN  HIM  WAS  YES” 


67 


the  prophets  of  Israel,  no  doubt,  but  promises 
written  before  their  day  in  the  very  nature  of 
the  human  heart,  in  its  craving  for  some- 
thing more,  its  hunger  for  love,  its  un- 
developed capacities,  and  its  growing  demand 
upon  the  universe.  The  Yes  for  all  these 
Paul  sees  in  Christ. 

We  have  to  study  Christ’s  effect  in  pro- 
ducing and  broadening  sympathy,  in  enlarg- 
ing outlook  and  developing  faculty,  in  making 
men  more  really  men  than  they  ever  were 
before — larger,  more  humane,  more  gentle 
and  tender,  more  open  to  the  world,  and 
stionger  and  more  fit  for  new  kinds  of  service 
— spiritual,  social,  and  intellectual — in  short, 
in  a larger  and  fuller  sense,  more  human.  We 
have  to  see  how  He  has  laid  more  emphasis 
than  any  other  religious  teacher  on  the  worth 
of  human  life,  the  beauty  of  human  relations, 
the  charm  of  the  world  about  us — sometimes 
by  direct  teaching,  sometimes  by  implication, 
and  most  of  all  by  His  influence  exercised  on 
those  who  love  Him  even  when  they  are  not 
very  conscious  of  being  influenced  by  Him  at 
all.  We  have  to  realise  that  this  has  been  the 
continuous  experience  of  the  Church,  and  in 


68 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


ever  a larger  and  deeper  measure.  The  nine- 
teenth century,  it  was  said,  was  nearer  Christ 
than  the  second  was.  Let  us  pray  that  the 
twentieth  come  nearer  still.  “ Where  the 
spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there  is  liberty,”  wrote 
Paul ; and  there  is  indeed  liberty  there — to  go 
about  the  Father’s  house  and  to  see  everything 
belonging  to  the  Father.  The  locked  doors 
are  few — ^and  in  some  the  keys  stand  waiting 
till  we  learn  to  turn  them,  while,  as  to  others — 
‘‘  Knock,  and  it  shall  be  opened  to  you.”  But, 
in  general,  it  is : “ Behold,  I have  set  before 
you  an  opened  door.” 

It  is  curious,  too,  to  remark  how,  when  a 
man  is  really  under  the  influence  of  Jesus 
Christ,  such  influence  does  not,  as  between 
man  and  man,  narrow  or  limit,  but  broaden 
him.  The  Holy  Spirit,  it  is  promised,  is  to 
guide  us  into  all  truth.  We  And,  wherever 
Jesus  Christ  has  been  in  reality,  men  have 
conceived  of  everything  in  a progressively 
larger  and  nobler  way — have  framed  greater 
ideals  of  personal,  social,  and  national 
righteousness,  and  achieved  a new  intellectual 
freedom. 

But  eventually  our  subject  of  study  is  Christ 


THE  STUDY  OF  CHRIST 


69 


Himself.  We  must  go  back  to  the  historical 
Jesus — to  the  great  Teacher  who  bade  men 
go  to  the  facts — “Tell  John  the  things  you  hear 
and  see  ” — ^and  Himself  the  great  fact  for  us, 
Who  saves  us  at  once  from  the  hardening  of 
tradition,  and  from  the  danger  of  being  lost 
altogether  in  a world  of  theory  and  spindrift 
fancy.  As  long  as  He  stands,  we  build  on  the 
Rock,  we  touch  the  actual  and  live  in  the  real. 


LECTURE  III 

The  Significance  of  the  Church  as  Witness 

OUR  subject  in  this  lecture  is  the  Chris- 
tian Church;  and  what  other  has  so 
many  claims  upon  our  interest  and 
our  study?  Think  of  its  long  history,  its  per- 
manence, its  recuperative  power,  its  force,  its 
solidarity,  its  place  and  part  in  all  human 
affairs;  and,  again,  of  the  great  succession 
of  significant  men  that  have  made  it. 
Whatever  its  origin  and  nature  may  be,  the 
part  it  has  played  and  still  plays  in  the  story 
of  the  race  entitles  it  to  a closer  study  than 
most  people  give  it.  We  do  not  realise  what 
it  means;  we  take  it  for  granted,  in  our  idle 
way,  and  hardly  even  wonder  that  it  should 
have  lasted  so  long,  or  how  it  can  have  done 
so,  or  how  it  began. 

The  problem  of  the  rise  of  the  Christian 
Church  in  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  face  of 
a great  religious  system,  hallowed  by  every 
emotion  that  the  associations  of  family  life 

71 


72 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


and  national  life,  of  literature  and  history,  can 
give* — ^of  a great  imperial  system  hostile  to 
it  from  Nero’s  reign  onward — is  one  that  may 
call  for  every  faculty  of  intelligence,  sympathy, 
and  historical  imagination  and  historical  sense 
that  we  possess . Gibbon  dealt  with  it  in  his  two 
most  famous  chapters — the  least  satisfactory 
chapters  of  his  masterpiece.  We  must  be 
more  friendly  than  he  was  to  the  Christian 
Church  if  we  are  to  understand  it — friendly 
as  every  historical  student  must  be  to  the 
subject  of  his  researches.  Sine  ira  et  studio 
is  the  phrase  of  Tacitus — yes,  without  anger 
and  partisanship,  but  not  without  sympathy. 
We  must  go  quietly  and  slowly  about  our 
work;  hurry  is  fatal  in  historical  study. 

Then  we  have  to  ask  what  has  kept  the 
Church  together  so  long,  and  kept  it  one,  in 
spite  of  the  gulfs  of  controversy  that  separate 
Protestant  and  Catholic.  We  know  quite  well 
that  in  the  last  resort  we  stand  together  and 


* The  volume  of  emotion  and  the  variety  of  association 
that  made  the  strength  of  the  old  religion  are  to  be  seen 
in  Plutarch.  Men,  he  says,  were  “ in  anguish  and  in  fear 
lest  Delphi  should  lose  its  glory  of  three  thousand  years,” 
and  it  had  not  lost  it. 


THE  VITALITY  OF  THE  CHURCH  73 


believe  in  one  another.  When  one  thinks 
of  the  great  philosophic  schools  of  the  past — 
how  small  their  numbers  have  been  in  spite 
of  their  great  influence — how  they  dis- 
integrated and  disappeared,  as  the  Stoics,  for 
instance,  did  after  the  reign  of  Marcus 
Aurelius — one  realises  the  contrast  in  the 
Church.  Its  numbers  have  been  vast — they 
are  greater  to-day  than  ever;  its  divisions 
have  been  more  acute  and  more  cruel  than 
those  of  any  philosophic  school;  and  yet  it 
lives.  We  shall  have  to  ask  in  virtue  of  what 
it  lives,  and  to  see  that  we  reach  an  adequate 
answer.  What  is  it  that  revives  the  Church 
again  and  again?  What  is  the  meaning  of 
the  great  movements  associated  with  such 
names  as  Luther,  Tyndale,  and  Wesley — ^all 
these,  men  of  the  academic  habit,  who  studied 
in  Universities  and  read  Greek — not  at  all 
our  common  idea  of  leaders  of  mass-move- 
ments ? There  is  no  secret  at  all  about  these 
men — they  were  fallible  like  ourselves,  liable 
to  the  charges  of  anger  and  narrowness  of 
view  and  mistaken  judgment,  what  you  will — 
but  they  have  this  also  in  common,  that  they 
all  lived  in  the  power  of  a renewed  realisation 


74 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


of  Jesus  Christ.  That  is  plain  enough.  We 
have  to  ask  ourselves  why  should  this  be 
responsible  for  new  eras  in  Christian  life  and 
thought — and  again  we  have  to  look  to  it 
carefully  that  we  really  answer  our  question. 

To  some  critics  the  most  conspicuous  thing 
about  the  Church  is  its  weakness;  and  in  a 
certain  sense  they  are  right.  The  Christian 
Church  has  many  weaknesses — some  which 
its  critics  see  better  than  it  does  itself,  and 
some  which  it  knows  and  they  do  not  know. 
Its  record  is  disfigured  with  terrible  errors 
and  follies ; and  at  times  it  has  been  guilty — 
sections  of  it,  at  least,  have  been  guilty — of 
what  must  be  called  crimes — crimes  against 
its  Founder,  against  the  love  of  God,  against 
ordinary  humanity.  We  need  not  play  the 
apologist,  or  seek  to  palliate  such  things,  or 
to  explain  that  wrongdoing  was  right  when 
viewed  from  some  peculiar  standpoint  or 
other.  We  may  take  the  thing  on  the  showing 
of  the  most  hostile  and  the  unfairest  critic  we 
can  find;  and  then  we  must  still  more  reso- 
lutely ask  how  it  is  that  a body  capable  of 
such  weakness,  of  such  error,  of  such  betrayals 
of  its  own  ideals,  can  yet  win  and  keep  the 


THE  STRENGTH  OF  THE  CHURCH  75 


love  and  the  loyalty  of  men  and  women,  in 
earnest  with  themselves  and  with  truth,  and 
can  affect  through  them  the  whole  course  of 
human  history — we  believe,  for  good;  but, 
if  our  critics  will  not  let  us  say  so  at  once, 
we  will  ask  only.  To  what  does  a body  so 
conspicuously  worthless  owe  its  influence  ? 

Let  us  take  an  illustration  from  ordinary 
history — Julius  Caesar.  We  will  read  the 
worst  that  is  to  be  said  about  him;  we  will 
draw  him  as  Shakespeare  drew  him,  from 
North’s  Plutarch — a.  man  of  conspicuous 
errors  and  defects — epileptic,  deaf,  ambitious, 
vacillating,  arrogant — falling  far  short  in  some 
matters  of  ordinary  standards  of  conduct.  Or 
we  will  take  Martin  Luther,  and,  for  the 
moment,  try  to  believe  every  foul  calumny 
that  the  meaner  partisans  of  the  Papacy  and 
of  modern  culture  have  heaped  on  him.  And 
then  we  have  a problem  indeed.  We  have 
now  to  explain  how  such  a Caesar  and  such 
a Luther  were  capable  of  such  great  things 
as  they  actually  achieved.  They  changed  the 
course  of  human  history.  We  will  allow  all 
that  sense  will  tolerate  to  tendencies  of  the 
times,  as  people  tell  us  to  do  to-day — people. 


76  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


it  seems  to  me,  who  do  not  always  penetrate 
quite  into  the  depths  of  things.  We  will  make 
every  deduction  that  is  historically  possible; 
and  then,  weighing  the  real  effect  of  these 
men,  on  a just  survey  of  everything  to  be 
considered,  we  will  wrestle  with  the  problem 
before  us.  If  they  had  been  (as  so  many 
suppose)  great  men  and  true  men,  the  explana- 
tion would  have  been  easier ; but  the  traducer 
has  only  effected  this — we  realise  now,  when 
we  know  at  last  the  frightful  deductions  that 
have  to  be  made,  how  great  the  men  were  in 
fact.  The  more  weakness  and  vice  we  load 
upon  them,  the  more  we  magnify  the  great- 
ness that  enabled  them  to  do  what  they 
actually  did,  in  spite  of  everything. 

Similarly,  the  greater  the  errors  of  the 
Christian  Church,  the  worse  its  failures  in  con- 
duct, insight,  and  sympathy,  in  grasp  of  truth 
or  sense  of  right  and  wrong — the  more  we 
have  to  explain.  If  the  minus  is  so  great, 
how  great  is  the  plus?  What  is  it  that  gives 
the  Church  its  power  ? That  it  has  power  and 
charm  and  influence,  we  can  see  at  a glance, 
in  the  love  men  have  for  the  Church,  and  in 
their  hatred  for  it.  Hate  and  love  of  such 


THE  STRENGTH  OF  THE  CHURCH  77 


force — that  carry  men  so  far — are  never 
waked  by  anything  weak  and  trivial ; and 
there  is  no  hatred  and  no  love  in  human 
history  equal  to  those  which  the  Church  has 
waked.  Why?  We  have  seen  the  weakness; 
we  have  to  see  the  strength. 

It  is  a commonplace  in  criticism — ^or  it 
should  be  so  by  now — that  the  beginner  is 
quicker  to  see  what  is  wrong  than  what  is 
right.  The  critics,  as  Disraeli  said  in  a famous 
passage,  are  the  men  who  have  failed;  and 
he  is  right — the  best  of  them  are  men  who 
would  have  created  if  they  could — would  have 
made  the  poem  or  painted  the  picture,  but 
they  did  not.  The  man  who  does,  criticises  in 
another  way — with  an  incisiveness  far  beyond 
theirs,  and  a tenderness  and  sensitiveness  they 
cannot  reach.  But,  in  the  main,  the  task 
of  criticism  for  most  of  us — at  least,  when  we 
are  measuring  ourselves  against  great  things 
in  art,  or  literature,  or  history,  and  it  is  wiser 
and  kinder  to  leave  the  rest  alone — is  to  find 
out  what  is  right,  how  and  why  the  thing 
is  right,  and  what  makes  it  right — what  gives 
it  its  appeal — where  its  power  lies.  The  critic 
will  be  better  trained  in  the  National  Gallery 


78 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


than  in  the  Royal  Academy.  So  if  we  are 
to  criticise  the  Christian  Church,  to  form  a 
real  judgment  upon  it,  to  be  sound  critics,  not 
mere  pickers  of  holes  and  triflers,  we  have 
to  find  out  first  where  its  strength  lies.  That 
is  the  vital  question  for  Delilah  and  her  Philis- 
tines when  they  are  dealing  with  Samson; 
it  is  the  vital  question  for  the  enemies  of 
the  Church,  and  they  can  do  nothing  till  they 
solve  it.  And  what  it  means  for  us  who  are 
committed  to  the  Church  of  Christ,  I need  not 
tell  you. 

In  this  lecture  I wish  to  concentrate  atten- 
tion upon  three  main  points,  from  the  con- 
sideration of  which  we  may  be  better  able 
to  take  some  measure  of  the  strength  of  the 
Christian  Church,  and  to  see  what  it  means 
and  what  lies  behind.  First  of  all,  I suggest 
that  we  should  study  more  closely  the  way 
in  which  the  Church  holds  its  main  doctrines, 
how  it  has  come  to  do  so,  and  what  is  its 
intellectual  right  to  hold  them;  and  incident- 
ally we  shall  have  to  remark  its  inability  not 
to  hold  them,  in  view  of  its  invariable  decline 
when  it  has  loosened  its  grip  upon  them.  In 
the  second  place,  we  must  examine  what  these 


THE  SANITY  OF  THE  CHURCH 


79 


main  tenets  are;  and,  lastly,  their  place  in  the 
actual  life  of  the  Church,  their  effect  upon 
the  conduct  and  method  of  the  Christian  com- 
munity, and  the  general  character  of  the 
results  that  have  followed  from  their  use  and 
application. 

I begin,  then,  with  what  I may  perhaps  call 
the  Sanity  of  the  Christian  Church. 

On  this  point,  the  first  thing  to  be  said 
is  that  the  Christian  community  has  always 
rested  on  the  validity  of  human  experience. 
There  are  people,  of  course,  who  have  main- 
tained the  doctrine  that  this  is  not  a sound 
basis,  that  there  is,  in  fact,  no  sound  basis  at 
all  for  knowledge,  but  that  knowledge  is  im- 
possible. How  they  can  know  this  is  not 
explained.  However,  the  Church  has  always 
based  itself  on  the  belief  that  through  ex- 
perience you  can  learn,  and  that  you  can 
definitely  and  quietly  conclude  that  certain 
things  are  true.  There  is  reality  in  the  ex- 
perience of  men,  and  knowledge  is  possible. 
From  the  way  in  which  things  can  be  done, 
and  also  from  the  ways  in  which  they  cannot 
be  done,  the  Christian  Church  believes  that 
it  may  learn  something  essential  and  vital. 


8o 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


The  story  of  mankind  is  not  for  it  an  idle 
thing, 

a Shadow-Show 

Played  in  a box  whose  candle  is  the  Sun — 

as  empty  and  meaningless  a sequence  as  a 
series  of  smoke-rings  blown  by  an  idle  man, 
one  after  the  other  going  away,  and  none 
contributing  to  any  before  it  or  after  it 
— a.  mere  arbitrary  succession  of  purpose- 
less monotony.*  On  the  contrary,  Christian 
thinkers  have  always  held  that  there  is  some- 
thing that  the  mind  can  grip  and  use  in  the 
history  of  mankind — something  valid  and  real; 
and  the  more  vital  and  real,  the  more  a man 
braces  his  mind  to  grapple  with  it  and  to 
understand  it  in  its  fulness.  The  Christian 
Church  does  not  rest  on  what  I have  heard 
called  Perhapsology.  Hence,  when  a certain 
type  of  experience  recurs  again  and  again,  it 
is  taken  to  be  significant,  and  not  accidental; 
and,  as  a result,  the  Church  calculates,  in  all 
its  dealings  with  men,  upon  the  recurrence  of 
certain  things.  The  human  mind,  with  all 

* This  is  unjust  to  the  smoke-rings,  every  one  of  which, 
as  well  as  the  whole  series,  will  point  to  natural  laws  which 
are  not  trifles. 


SOME  THINGS  KNOWN 


8i 


its  triumphs  over  the  material  world,  and  all 
its  acquisitions  of  new  knowledge,  will  con- 
tinue to  act  in  much  the  same  way.*  There 
will  be  the  same  obstinate  questionings  age  by 
age — now  turned  upon  this  aspect  of  life,  now 
upon  the  other  phase  of  it;  the  same  hesita- 
tions between  theories  of  good  and  evil,  the 
same  wavering  between  the  appeals  of  good 
and  evil,  the  same  weakness,  and  the  same 
needs  and  cravings.  And  to  meet  these 
needs  and  cravings  the  Church  offers  the 
same  Christ — in  the  certainty  that,  though 
the  storms  of  criticism  continue  with  greater 
or  less  violence  to  beat  upon  this  or  that 
element  of  the  Christian  faith,  there  still  work 
for  it  the  same  forces,  the  same  movements 
of  the  mind,  that  in  ages  past  have  taken  and 
still  take  men,  often  sorely  against  the  lines 
of  their  preference,  into  the  same  acceptance 
of  God  in  Christ.  I have  forestalled  here  one 
of  the  great  conclusions  the  Church  draws, 
but  the  immediate  point  is  rather  the  way 
in  which  it  comes  to  draw  it. 

In  the  next  place,  I would  urge  you  to 

* “ Mankind  advances,  but  man  remains  the  same,”  Goetite 
said. 

§ 


82 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


consider  that  the  conclusions  of  the  Church 
have  not  gone  unchallenged.  The  Christian 
community  has  not  gone,  like  Odysseus’  men, 
with  wax  in  their  ears,  unable  to  hear  the 
Sirens.  It  has  lived  in  the  world  and  heard  all 
that  the  world  has  to  say — whether  it  wished 
or  not — the  world  took  care  it  should  hear. 
For  it  is  rather  curious  to  see  how  from  the 
very  first  the  world  has  devoted  itself  to  clear 
the  Christian  mind  of  error.  The  Christian 
faith  has  been  demonstrated  again  and  again 
to  be  ridiculous  by  every  argument  that  the 
cleverest  and  wittiest  of  its  opponents  could 
devise,  from  Celsus  down  to  present-day 
Members  of  Parliament.  Just  think  of  the 
vast  amount  of  wit  that  has  been  expended 
upon  Christian  people  in  nineteen  centuries, 
from  Lucian  to  Voltaire  and  onward — and 
the  Christian  faith  has  survived  it.  Or,  again, 
think  of  the  serious  argument  that  age  by 
age  has  been  based  upon  the  best  learning  and 
science  of  each  generation,  to  convince  the 
Christian  that  if,  as  he  must  grant,  philosophy 
was  in  possession  of  sound  canons  of  reason, 
his  faith  was  hopelessly  absurd,  or,  at  least, 
hopelessly  misconceived  by  himself ; not  that 


THE  CHALLENGE 


83 


it  was  quite  without  elements  of  sense  and 
truth,  but  that  these  were  entangled  in  a fabric 
of  myth  and  nonsense,  from  which  it  was 
urgent  that  they  should  be  cut  away  and  set 
free.  And  again,  think  of  the  pressure  other 
than  intellectual  that  has  been  brought  to 
bear  upon  the  Christian  communities  from 
time  tO'  time  in  one  land  and  another — ^and 
upon  individuals — every  kind  of  persuasion, 
from  the  crown  of  Henri  IV.  to  the  Vivicom- 
burium  which  threatened  Tertullian.  Love 
and  hate  have  used  all  the  arts  of  enticement 
and  terror  to  bring  the  Christian  away  from 
his  relations  with  Christ — ^and  Christ  has  per- 
sistently been  too  strong  for  them  all.  If  a 
faith  can  be  tested  by  what  it  has  survived, 
Christianity  has  been  well  tested. 

But  the  Christian  faith  has  been  tested  in 
another  and  a rather  subtler  way.  The 
Church  has  always  been  sensitive  tO'  philo- 
sophic criticism,  as  we  are  ourselves  to-day. 
In  every  generation  the  sons  of  Christians 
have  received  the  best  available  education  of 
their  day — in  those  studies  which,  as  St. 
Augustine  put  it,  “ they  call  liberal  and  we 
c^ll  secular” — they  have  been  steeped  ip 


84 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


philosophy,  and  have  turned  eyes,  enlightened 
by  their  training,  upon  the  faith  of  their 
fathers.  Again,  the  early  Church,  and  not 
it  alone,  has  won  men  of  the  philosophic 
temper,  for  whom  it  was  essential  to  review 
their  Christian  faith  and  their  philosophic 
principles  side  by  side.  Philosophy,  however, 
is  one  thing,  and  philosophic  systems  another. 
Philosophy  is  a natural  instinct  of  the  human 
mind,  a passion  for  a co-ordinated  view  of 
things,  an  inherent  compulsion  to  speculation 
in  order  to  reach  truth.  But  an  instinct  is  a 
very  different  thing  from  the  habits  or  prin- 
ciples of  thought  to  which  in  a given  case  it 
may  lead.  Yet  men  have  always  been  apt  to 
identify  the  instinct  with  the  system  of 
thought.  It  is  essential  for  a complete  man 
to  reflect  as  to  the  bearings  of  his  Christian 
faith  upon  the  whole  world  of  his  experience 
— there  must  be  Christian  philosophy.  But 
men  personify  Philosophy  as  they  do  History 
or  Science,  and  will  allege  that  Philosophy 
teaches  this  or  that  principle.  I do  not  think 
that  this  is  defensible,  for  I observe  that  age 
by  age  there  has  been  change  in  the  principles 
of  philosophers.  Many  of  the  most  f^r- 


THE  TEST  OF  COMPROMISE 


85 


reaching  postulates  or  preconceptions  of  the 
age  of  St.  Paul  have  by  now  long  been  mere 
curiosities  of  the  text-books.  Yet  their  sway 
was  once  enormous,  and  an  educated  man 
dared  not  dispute  them  if  he  valued  his  repu- 
tation for  thought  and  culture. 

In  every  age  the  Church  has  shown  a 
tendency  to  express  the  Christian  faith  in  the 
philosophic  terms  of  that  age — a tendency 
laudable  but  dangerous ; for  the  proper  desire 
to  be  intelligible,  the  natural  instinct  for 
making  a unity  of  one’s  thought,  have  de- 
clined into  compromise.  Over  and  over  again 
Christians  have  been  carried  by  a desire  for 
re-statement  and  accommodation  to  a point 
at  which  it  became  evident  to  quieter  people 
that  they  had  left  the  historic  reality  or  the 
eternal  significance — or  both — of  Christ  Him- 
self far  behind.  In  the  early  second  century, 
in  deference  to  a philosophic  dogma  that  God 
and  a Godlike  man  were  immune  from  pain, 
a school  arose  who  taught  that  the  death 
of  Jesus  on  the  Cross  was  not  real — a phantom 
was  crucified,  or,  at  best,  a man’s  body — not 
Christ.  Such  a compromise,  it  was  quickly 
seen,  emptied  the  Christian  faith  of  all  reality 


86 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


and  all  value ; it  palpably  gave  away  the  whole 
essence  of  the  faith.  Who  could  turn  for  real 
help  to  a Christ  impassive  of  pain — or  die  for  a 
Christ  who  vanished  at  the  sight  of  the  Cross  ? 
Again,  the  whole  Arian  controversy  arose 
from  the  desire  to  accommodate  the  Incarna- 
tion to  that  method  of  conceiving  God  which 
underlies  Neo-Platonism,  and  has  been  called 
the  “deification  of  the  word  Not.”  Once 
again  the  compromise  was  one  that  gave 
everything  away. 

One  thing  has  always  stood  out  clearly 
sooner  or  later.  Whenever  the  Church  at 
large,  or  any  Church  in  particular,  has  com- 
mitted itself  to  any  scheme  of  thought  that 
has  lessened  the  significance  of  Jesus  Christ, 
it  has  declined.  Error  always  tells;  and  the 
error  of  over-estimating  Jesus  Christ  ought 
to  have  told  by  now,  but  the  experience  of  the 
Church  so  far  suggests  that  it  has  no  real 
reason  to  dread  any  danger  from  over- 
estimating Him,  but  rather  that  the  danger 
has  always  come  from  obscuring  or  abating 
His  significance.  It  is,  I think,  worth  while 
to  reflect  upon  what  this  involves.  The  faith 
has  been  tested  in  every  compromise  that 


THE  FACT  GAINED  87 

Christians  have  attempted,  and  if  it  is  still 
held,  it  is  with  some  warrant. 

A Christian  philosophy  there  must  be,  but 
it  will  not  be  reached  by  abandoning  the 
one  fixed  point  we  have  attained.  In  the 
meantime  the  Christian  has  had  sometimes 
to  stand  like  St.  Sebastian  in  the  pictures 
— stripped  of  every  rag  of  philosophic  and  in- 
tellectual dignity,  and  exposed  to  the  shafts  of 
every  so-called  philosopher  who  cared  to  shoot 
— ^^and  quite  glad  so  to  stand,  conscious  that 
he  had  something  for  which  it  was  worth 
while  to  be  stripped  and  shot  at,  and  to  go 
through  every  kind  of  shame. 

For,  in  the  last  place,  the  Church,  with 
Aristotle,  sets  the  fact  before  the  explanation. 
The  thing  is  not  irrational,  if  it  is  true,  even 
if  we  cannot  explain  it  yet. 

So  far  we  have  tried  to  consider  some  of  the 
grounds  on  which  the  Christian  community 
claims  to  be  entitled  to  hold  certain  views  of 
its  own.  These  are  some  of  the  factors  which 
have  worked  for  verification — forces  that  have 
acted  together  to  keep  the  Church  heading 
for  truth  all  the  time. 

We  come  now  to  some  of  the  main 


88 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


convictions  -which  have  been  tested  in  this 
■way. 

First  of  all,  we  may  set  here  the  serious 
view  that  the  Christian  Church  has  always 
taken  of  moral  evil.  There  are  those  who 
minimise  evil,  who  see  in  it  “good  in  the 
making,”  and  play  with  the  idea  that  all  the 
evil  that  men  do  is,  in  a certain  sense,  the 
outcome  of  some  divinely-given  instinct  within 
them.  This  is  rather  confused  thinking.  The 
instinct  and  the  use  made  of  it  are  not  the 
same  thing.  It  is  nearer  the  fact  to  say,  with 
Principal  Henderson,  that  “ the  horrible  thing 
about  sin  is  that  it  is  using  God  against  God  ” 
— turning  the  gift  in  which  He  has  given  Him- 
self against  the  giver,  the  gift  which  is  equally 
susceptible  of  another  use.  “ It  was,”  as 
Milton  says,  “ from  out  the  rind  of  one  apple 
tasted  that  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil, 
as  two  twins  cleaving  together,  leap’d  forth, 
into  the  World.  And  perhaps  this  is  that 
doom  which  Adam  fell  into  of  knowing  good 
and  evil,  that  is  to  say,  of  knowing  good  by 
e-vil.”  But  on  the  previous  page  he  says; 
“ the  Knowledge  cannot  defile  ...  if  the  Will 
and  Conscience  be  not  defil’d.”  The  critic 


MORAL  EVIL 


89 


must  look  more  closely  into  his  psychology. 
The  Church,  face  to  face  with  the  ugly  facts 
of  human  life,  such  as  depraved  instincts  and 
conduct  openly  and  flagrantly  anti-social,  has 
advanced  sound  thinking  by  calling  some 
things  categorically  evil.  Whatever  the  origin 
of  evil — ^and  Christian  thinkers  have  turned 
that  over  pretty  often — the  Church  knows  by 
now  what  evil  is  like  and  what  its  effects  are, 
and  has  set  itself  to  combat  evil — ^and  it  is 
hard  to  imagine  a better  way  to  the  discovery 
of  what  it  really  is. 

I take  two  forms  of  evil  to  illustrate  the 
point.  What  does  cruelty  mean?  It  is  a 
subtle  thing.  Human  nature,  as  those  who 
have  read  it  best  have  seen  most  clearly,  is 
capable  of  more  cruelty  than  we  like  to  think. 
Shylock  and  Lady  Macbeth,  as  Shakespeare 
saw,  are  not  far  from  any  one  of  us.  But, 
above  all,  we  must  weigh  the  Christian  recog- 
nition of  the  weakness  of  the  human  will. 
Socrates  held  that,  if  a man  really  knew  what 
was  good,  he  would  do  it;  a view  that  may 
be  defended  on  the  ground  of  some  ambiguity 
in  the  word  know,  but  otherwise  past  defence. 
The  Stoics,  the  noblest  teachers  of  mankind 


90 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


apart  from  Christ,  staked  all  on  the  human 
will,  and  lost.  What  chance  in  most  of  us 
has  the  will  against  the  imagination ? “It 
is  so  easy  to  make  up  one’s  mind,’’  the  girl 
says  in  Mr.  Barrie’s  book;  and  the  answer 
her  playmate  gives  is  a true  one:  “ It’s  easy 
to  you  that  has  just  one  mind.’’  St.  Augus- 
tine* and  St.  Paul  knew  how  intricately  the 
mind  can  be  divided  against  itself — knew  it 
in  virtue  of  struggles  made  by  resolve,  by 
self-discipline,  by  self-government,  to  bring 
the  mind  into  unity  with  itself  under  a law 
of  righteousness.  Men  of  this  type,  who  have 
done  all  to  subdue  themselves  to  right,  for 
whom  the  standards  and  ideals  of  thought 
and  conduct  are  progressively  higher — these 
are  the  people  who  recognise  most  clearly 
and  most  sadly  how  hopeless  it  is  to  try 
to  do  anything  with  their  own  wills  and 
characters.  Flabbiness  and  stubbornness 
seem  incompatible  vices,  and  the  human  heart 


* Confessions,  v\\\.,  g,  21.  Imperat  animus,  ut  velit  animus, 
nec  alter  est  nec  facit  tamen  . . . sed  non  ex  toto  vult,  non 

ergo  ex  toto  imperat  . . . non  igitur  monstrum  partim  velle, 
partim  nolle,  sed  aegritudo  animi  est  . . . et  tdeo  sunt  duat 
voluntates  quia  una  earum  tota  non  est.  . . . 


LAW 


91 


knows  them  for  twins.  It  is  worth  noting  as 
we  pass  that  in  the  experience  of  both  St. 
Paul  and  St.  Augustine  the  recognition  of 
evil  was  the  first  step  to  the  solution  of  their 
intellectual  problems.  The  moral  problem, 
they  found,  came  first;  and  when  they  set 
to  work  in  earnest  at  that,  and  were  willing 
to  avail  themselves  of  the  best  means  to  solve 
it,  they  found  themselves  nearer  to  a real 
understanding  of  God  and  His  nature. 

In  the  second  place,  we  may  consider  the 
Christian  conviction  as  to  the  inexorable  char- 
acter of  law.*  There  the  Stoic  was  before 
the  Christian,  so  that  it  is  not  exactly  novel 
when  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  tells  us  that  there 
is  no  forgiveness.  Certain  sections  of  the 
Church  may  have  provoked  him,  for  there 
is  a type  of  Christian  teaching  which  suggests 
that  God  is,  after  all,  the  arch-sentimentalist 
of  the  universe.  Who  will  let  His  laws  work 
off  and  on,  like  electric  light  in  its  early  days, 
and  is  willing  to  be  the  consenting  victim  of 
certain  conspicuous  dodges.  That  teaching 
is  not  in  the  New  Testament,  and  it  is  as 


* This  point  will  recur  in  the  fifth  lecture. 


92 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


well  for  us  to  recognise  as  soon  as  possible 
the  hard  element  in  the  Gospel.* 

The  Church,  like  its  Master,  has  based  itself 
on  fact  and  lived  among  facts,  and  it  is  by 
now  fairly  well  possessed  of  some  truths ; and 
the  eternal  connection  of  action  and  conse- 
quence is  one  of  them.  The  popular  mind 
finds  this  in  the  New  Testament  in  the  visions 
of  Judgment  and  the  Great  White  Throne; 
but  behind  these  lay  a profound  experience 
of  life.  In  a series  of  vivid  metaphors  the 
actual,  obvious,  and  present  effects  of  sin 
are  sketched  by  St.  Paul  and  others.  Men 
become  alienated  from  the  life  of  God;  God 
gives  them  up  to  a reprobate  mind — a mind 
that  cannot  discharge  its  proper  functions, 
a conscience  cauterised  or  darkened — untrue, 
that  is,  in  its  estimates  of  life,  unreliable;  a 
conscience  stained.  Here  there  is  a parallel  in 

* Paul  Wernle,  The  Beginning  of  Christianity  (tr.),  vol.  i. 
p.  286:  “For  clear-thinking,  ethical  natures,  such  as  those 
of  Jesus  and  St.  Paul,  it  is  a downright  necessity  to  separate 
heaven  and  hell  as  distinctly  as  possible.  It  is  only  ethically 
worthless  speculations  that  have  always  tried  to  minimise 
this  distinction.  Carlyle  is  an  instance  in  our  own  times  of 
how  men,  even  to-day,  once  more  enthusiastically  welcome 
the  conception  of  hell  as  soon  as  the  distinction  between  good 
and  bad  becomes  all-important  to  them.” 


LAW 


93 


the  teaching  of  Marcus  Aurelius — “ Of  what- 
ever colour  are  the  thoughts  you  think  often, 
to  that  colour  does  your  mind  grow;  for  the 
soul  is  dyed  by  its  thoughts.”*  The  idea 
is  of  a conscience  through  which,  as  through 
coloured  glass,  a man  sees  all  life  the  colour 
of  his  sin.  The  law  is  inexorable  here ; and 
the  Church  knows  it  better  than  some  of  its 
critics. 

In  the  third  place,  we  may  set  the  high 
value  which  the  Christian  community  has 
always  placed  on  the  soul.  Plato  said  much 
in  this  direction,  and  the  Church  says  more. 
No  school  of  thought  has  ever  treated  the  soul 
so  seriously.  Bear  in  mind  the  utmost  that 
the  Church  has  had  to  say  about  Christ — 
waiving  for  the  moment  any  discussion  of 
the  rightness  or  wrongness  of  that — ^and  then 
realise  that  it  has  taught  that  this  Christ, 
of  Whom  it  has  believed  the  most  incredible 
things,  died  for  the  meanest  of  mean  and 
vile  men.  The  Stoic  had  to  let  some  men 
go.  But  whether  we  accept  or  reject  the 
Christian  teaching  as  to  the  soul,  it  is  clear 


* Marcus  Aurelius,  V„  i6. 


94 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


that  higher  value  is  not  to  be  set  on  the  soul, 
its  grandeur,  its  worth,  and  its  dignity  than 
the  Church  set  on  it  — pro  quo  Christas 
mortuus  est — ^and  this  without  slurring  in  any 
way  the  evil  it  saw  in  the  soul. 

The  Christian  Church  has  always  recognised 
the  infinite  element  in  the  soul  of  man.  This 
is  partly  expressed  in  the  doctrine  of  its  im- 
mortality. The  soul  is  built  for  immortality 
and  for  God;  it  reaches  into  infinity,  in  the 
conviction  that  it  must  have  God  in  all  His 
fulness — the  heart  crying  out  for  the  living 
God,  crying  out  against  its  own  evil,  dis- 
satisfied till  it  has  God,  and  rests  in  Him.  Ta 
nos  fecisti  ad  te  et  inquietum  est  cor  nostrum 
donee  requiescat  in  te*  And  here  again  the 
Church  rests  on  experience. 

On  one  of  the  great  trunk  roads  of  India 
a missionary  saw  a woman  measuring  herself 
in  prostrations  along  the  ground — a familiar 
form  of  pilgrimage.  Through  dust  and  dirt 
and  heat  she  moved  onward,  lying  down, 
marking  the  farthest  point  her  hand  could 
reach,  and  rising  and  starting  again  from  that 


Augustine,  Confessions,  i.,  j. 


THE  SOUL’S  VALUE 


95 


point  to  prostrate  herself  and  reach  forward 
again.  She  must  have  made  seven  or  eight 
hundred  prostrations  to  cover  a mile.  He 
asked  where  she  was  going,  and  she  named 
a shrine  in  the  Himalayas,  where  from  some 
cleft  in  a valley  a burst  of  natural  gas 
would  from  time  to  time  leap  and  take  fire 
in  the  air  and  vanish — a.  fleeting  manif  estation 
of  God.  It  meant  for  her  a journey  of  a 
thousand  miles.  Why  was  she  going  ? “ Uski 
darshan,"  she  said — two  words  and  no  more : 
“Vision  of  him.’’* 

“ Vision  of  Him ! ’’  The  Church  knows  that 
that  is  the  cry  of  the  human  heart,  and  it 
knows,  too,  what  that  cry  involves  at  last — 
the  acceptance  of  God  on  His  own  terms  of 
love  and  righteousness.  That  sense  for  God 
can  be  deadened  in  a man,  if  he  is  shallow 
enough;  but  for  anyone  for  whom  life  is 
real,  shallow  views  are  impossible,  as  men 
find  out  in  the  misery  of  life  without  God. 
The  intellect,  working  in  the  abstract,  may 
persuade  itself  that  there  is  no  God — none  that 
can  be  reached;  and  you  have  the  strange 
tearing  of  the  nature  in  two,  the  heart  crying 


* This  story  was  told  me  by  Mr.  C.  F.  Andrews,  of  Delhj, 


96 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


out,  and  the  intellect  arguing  it  down,  and 
pretending  not  to  hear.  The  heart  is  right; 
for  peace  is  never  reached  till  the  intellect 
accepts  what  the  heart  has  known  all  along. 
Instinct  and  intuition  may  take  us  very  far 
astray — so,  too,  may  intellect.  It  is  interesting 
in  this  connection  to  remark  how,  as  men 
grow  older,  and  grow  into  the  meaning  of 
human  relations,  and  the  deepest  feelings 
bound  up  with  them,  they  turn  away,  like  the 
poet  Virgil,  from  even  the  most  splendid 
rationalism. 

Lastly,  for  the  present — for  we  must  return 
to  this  in  the  lectures  that  follow — we  may 
remind  ourselves  that  while  others  have  recog- 
nised the  reality  of  evil  and  the  inexorable 
character  of  law,  the  grandeur  of  the  human 
soul  (to  some  extent)  and  its  cry  for  God, 
for  the  Church  all  these  things  point  to  Jesus 
Christ.  The  central  conviction — the  crowning 
offence  and  error  of  the  Church  in  the  eyes 
of  all  its  critics  from  the  beginning  till  now — 
is  the  belief  that  “ God  was  in  Christ  recon- 
ciling the  world  unto  Himself” — that  Jesus 
Christ  is  the  same,  yesterday,  and  to-day,  and 
forever, 


NO  DESPAIR  IN  THE  CHURCH  97 


To  conclude,  I come  to  the  conduct  and 
method  of  the  Church  in  view  of  its  con- 
victions. 

First  of  all,  then,  the  Christian  Church  is 
the  one  body  in  all  the  world  incapable  of 
despair.  The  Stoic  did  despair : “When  a man 
is  hardened  to  stone,  how  shall  we  be  able 
to  deal  with  him  by  argument?”  There  is 
not,  after  all,  very  much  to  be  done  with  some 
people  by  argument — on  that  we  can  agree. 
But  the  Christian  Church,  conscious  of  its 
own  story^ — the  company  of  Christian  men, 
each  conscious  of  a new  life  in  One  “ Who 
loved  me  and  gave  Himself  for  me” — knows 
quite  well  what  to  do.  The  envoy  of  Christ, 
remembering  Who  sent  him,  never  hesitates. 
He  will  not  compromise,  nor  blink  facts,  nor 
abate  (like  the  Unjust  Steward)  the  figure 
upon  the  bill;  he  will  ask  the  highest  from 
the  man  dead  as  stone,  for  anything  less 
would  be  an  abatement  of  the  man’s  worth. 
He  will  not  play  with  cheap  systems  of  sal- 
vation, as  men  did  in  the  Graeco-Roman 
world  in  the  early  days  of  the  Church,  and 
do  still;  but  he  will  go  with  a simple  and 
clear-cut  message,  the  outcome  of  his  own 
7 


98 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


experience — no  mechanism,  no  dodge,  be- 
neath the  dignity  of  the  soul,  but  an  offer  of 
forgiveness  and  power  and  new  life  in  Christ. 

The  religious  systems  of  the  world  may 
be  grouped  under  three  classes — not  quite  ex- 
clusively, for  some  of  them  overlap  two  of  the 
classes,  or  even  all  three.  There  are  the 
religions  of  magic,  found  all  over  the  heathen 
world,  and  not  there  alone,  perhaps — schemes 
of  initiation,  incantation,  mystery,  and,  as  the 
Greek  put  it,  “ things  done  ” — 8pciyu,eva  and 
opyia  — for  which  in  the  early  centuries  of 
our  era  a great  apology  was  made  in  the  name 
of  Philosophy  by  Plutarch  and  Apuleius  and 
the  Neo-Platonists.  To  this  we  shall  have 
to  return  in  another  lecture.  But  a great  step 
forward  had  long  before  been  made  by  Plato 
himself,  when,  in  his  Republic,  he  made  a clean 
sweep  of  quacks  and  prophets  and  “ sacrifices 
and  jollifications,”*  and  preached  the  religion 
of  Morals.  In  the  Gorgias  he  proclaims  that 
there  is  no  fear  in  the  next  world  for  the 
man  who  spends  his  life  “with  his  eye  upon 
truth  ’ (ry^v  aki^Oeiav  (TKo:raiv) ‘for  you  will  suffer 


* Republic,  ii.,  364  A — 365  A. 


MAGIC  AND  MERIT 


99 


nothing  terrible,  if  you  will  really  be 
honourable  and  good,  and  practise  virtue.”* 
That  is  a great  religion,  if  it  is  followed  in  a 
great  and  profound  way,  because,  if  a man 
take  it  seriously,  it  will  bring  him  into  touch 
with  realities.  But  there  he  will  learn  its 
limitations,  for  he  will  find,  with  St.  Paul,  how 
desperately  impossible  are  its  conditions.  If 
he  does  not  reach  this  point,  there  is  a worse 
peril,  for,  as  our  Lord  taught  about  the 
Pharisees,  he  will  be  liable  to  lose  all  sense 
of  reality  altogether,  and  the  religion  will 
decline  into  the  pursuit  of  merit — and  ‘‘  the 
damnation  of  hell,”  as  Jesus  said.  Yet  this 
old  religion  finds  its  advocates  still,  pleading 
for  self-culture  and  self-discipline — which  is 
a higher  thing  than  self-culture — and  the 
service  of  men,  too,  (like  the  Stoics),  even  on 
the  basis  of  an  unsatisfied  heart. 

But  the  Christian  religion  is  quite  other — 
it  is  the  religion  of  Grace,  the  only  one.  Its 
faith  is  in  the  willingness  of  God  to  give  all 
that  man  needs — in  Christ,  salvation  from  sin, 
new  and  newer  ideals  of  righteousness,  a re- 


Gorgias,  527  D. 


100 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


emancipated  will,  inward  peace,  and  perpetual 
joy.  “ Give  what  Thou  biddest,”  prayed  St. 
Augustine,  “ and  bid  what  Thou  wilt.”* 
Whatever  men  may  have  to  say  about  it,  to 
this  the  Church  is  committed.  How  impos- 
sible the  tasks  are  which  lie  before  it,  the 
Christian  community,  after  long  experience, 
knows  better  than  anyone ; and,  as  a result 
of  that  long  experience,  there  stands  the  faith 
that  God  gives  all  and  does  all  in  Christ. 

And  here  is  our  last  point  on  this  head. 
Just  as,  when  we  dealt  with  the  convictions 
that  make  up  the  Christian  faith,  we  found 
all  summed  up  in  the  sufficiency  of  Jesus 
Christ,  so  here  again,  in  the  sphere  of  action, 
we  find  Luther’s  words  stand  for  the 
experience  of  every  Christian — Nos  nihil 
sunius ; Christas  solus  est  omnia.  In  the 
centre  of  all,  in  life  and  work,  the  Church  sets 
the  unexplored  Jesus  Christ,  that  historical 
person  who  was  nailed  to  the  Cross,  and  who 
still,  in  the  faith  of  the  Church,  lives  and 
works  and  does  all.  We  cannot  tell  you 
all  we  want  to  know  about  Him;  the  Church 


• Confessions,  x.,  29,  40,  da  quod  iubes  et  tube  quod  vis. 


CHRISTUS  SOLUS  EST  OMNIA 


lOI 


looks  to  eternity  for  some  of  that;  there  are 
many  things  we  cannot  explain ; but  by 
experience  in  life  and  work  and  faith,  we  have 
found  that  all  turns  upon  Him. 

My  last  word  for  to-day  is  this.  If  we  can 
learn  anything  from  history,  if  it  has  anything 
certain  to  tell  us,  it  is  that,  if  any  group  of 
beliefs,  any  body  of  doctrine,  any  faith,  has 
ever  justified  itself  in  human  experience,  it  is 
the  Christian  faith;  or,  if  that  seem  too 
sweeping  a statement  (I  do  not  think  it  is),  let 
us  say  this — that  the  results  of  the  Church’s 
belief,  and  of  its  action  upon  those  beliefs,  are 
such  as  to  claim  the  very  closest  attention  from 
people  who  are  in  earnest  with  life.  These 
results  are  not  to  be  lightly  treated,  but  with  a 
full  sense  of  the  difficulties  to  be  overcome 
before  they  can  be  achieved,  and  of  their  sig- 
nificance in  the  life  of  the  man  who  knows 
them.  What,  then,  does  the  re-emancipation  of 
the  will  mean — with  its  escape  from  the  clutch 
of  habit,  its  triumph  over  the  disastrous  effects 
of  the  stained  conscience,  and  the  hopeless- 
ness and  paralysis  of  sin  ? Again,  what  is  the 
significance  of  the  joy  that  has  from  the  begin- 
ning filled  the  Christian  life,  overflowing  all 


102 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


the  obstacles,  real  enough,  that  militate 
against  peace  ? What  is  to  be  said  of  Christian 
joy  as  an  index  to  the  ultimate  truth  of 
things  ?*  And,  lastly,  what  are  we  to  say 
of  the  power  that  goes  with  the  Christian 
life  ? Criticism  from  without  and  self  Criticism 
from  within,  the  consciousness  of  failure  at 
every  turn,  as  the  splendid  ideals  of  Jesus 
Christ  shine  more  and  more  into  the  soul — not- 
withstanding all,  the  Christian  Church  has 
been  effective;  it  has  been  doing  through 
nineteen  centuries  what  Jesus  Christ  pledged 
Himself  that  it  should  do.  I ask  you,  as 
students  of  human  nature  and  of  history.  Do 
you  realise  at  all  in  its  fulness  what  that 
means  ? It  is  worth  study. 


*To  this  we  shall  have  to  return  in  the  fifth  lecture. 


LECTURE  IV 

The  Experience  of  the  Early  Church 

TO-DAY  we  have  to  consider  the  ex- 
perience of  the  early  Church — to  re- 
capture, if  we  can,  something  of  the 
impulse  and  the  happiness  that  made  it  the 
joyous  and  powerful  thing  it  was.  But  let 
us  first  try  to  sum  up  the  results  we  have  so 
far  reached. 

We  have  seen  that  our  business  in  dealing 
with  the  Christian  tradition  is  verification — 
to  get  back  to  the  facts  and  to  know  them  in 
their  fulness,  to  win  from  them  all  their  value 
and  significance. 

In  the  second  place,  we  have  seen  that  we 

must  give  a closer  attention  to  experience  as 

embodied  in  the  tradition  of  the  Christian 

community,  and  lay  more  stress  upon  the 

probability  of  real  truth  being  embodied  in 

some  way  in  the  main  doctrines  of  the  Church. 

We  may  not  accept,  word  for  word,  exactly, 

what  the  Church  has  said  as  the  final  ex- 

103 


104  the  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 

pression  of  truth,  but  we  shall  feel  in  it  and 
through  it — operative  somehow  in  spite  of 
errors  of  statement — some  element  of  truth 
that  is  real  and  vital. 

Thirdly,  we  looked  at  the  Church  itself,  and 
recognised  how  it  had  been  tested  by  the 
criticism  of  the  world,  by  self-criticism,  by  the 
desire  to  compromise,  and  had  so  far  estab- 
lished its  right  to  be  heard  as  at  least  a serious 
witness — a.  witness,  that  is,  who,  however  con- 
fused in  utterance,  had  truth  to  tell,  and  was 
trying  in  all  earnestness  to  tell  it. 

To-day  we  have  to  try,  through  the  words 
and  literature  of  the  early  Church,  to  reach 
what  lies  behind.  The  phrase  of  that  day  is 
not  ours,  nor  are  the  preconceptions;  we 
approach  everything  in  a different  way;  but 
we  have  to  remember  that  none  the  less  we 
are  dealing  with  human  material,  with  a real 
experience,  and  we  must  cultivate  the  imagina- 
tion to  penetrate  an  unfamiliar  dialect  if  we 
are  to  make  anything  at  all  of  history. 

There  is  a considerable  body  of  early  Chris- 
tian literature,  and  perhaps  no  other  literature 
has  ever  had  so  strange  a fate.  One  part  of 
it  is  familiar  to  every  race  of  mankind,  civilised 


EARLY  CHRISTIAN  BOOKS  105 

or  uncivilised,  beyond  any  books  the  world 
has  seen;  and  the  rest  of  it  in  the  Apostolic 
Fathers,  the  Odes  of  Solomon,  and  the  Apolo- 
gists of  the  second  century,  is  left  to  specialists 
and  ignored  in  general  even  by  classical 
scholars  who  study  the  Roman  Empire.  Yet 
it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  instinct,  or  what- 
ever it  was,  that  made  the  New  Testament 
canon,  was  generally  right  both  in  choice  and 
in  rejection.  If  we  are  really  aiming  at  the 
fact  and  truth  of  Christian  experience,  this 
literature  must  be  studied  with  the  same 
earnest  enthusiasm  as  any  other. 

Mr.  H.  G.  Wood  has  made  a very  telling 
criticism  upon  one  exponent  of  early  Church 
history,  who  has  of  late  years  taken  pains  to 
be  heard.  “ He  has  no  theory  of  any  early 
Christian  document;  he  does  not  explain  how 
it  came  to  be  written,  by  whom,  or  under 
what  impulse,  or  for  what  purpose.  He  never 
explains  a Pauline  epistle  as  a document.” 

That  is  a most  damaging  criticism.  What 
sort  of  history  can  be  written  from  un- 
examined sources  ? What  is  history  without 
what  the  Germans  call  Qaellenkritik  — 
criticism  of  sources?  Has  a historian,  of  all 


io6  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 

people,  any  right  to  use  a book  as  an  illiterate 
person  would  ? A book  is — a book.  But  wha^ 
is  a book  ? That  is  a question  worth  thinking 
about ; and  classical  study  in  this  country  has 
declined  for  want  of  such  reflection.  How 
does  a book  come  into  being  ? What  is 
its  genesis  ? There  is  a fine  passage  in 
Emerson’s  poem,  The  Problem,  which  answers 
these  questions : 

Out  from  the  heart  of  nature  rolled 
The  burdens  of  the  Bible  old; 

The  litanies  of  nations  came, 

Like  the  volcano’s  tongue  of  flame, 

Up  from  the  burning  core  below, — 

The  canticles  of  love  and  woe. 

Or,  again,  there  are  Carlyle’s  words,  as  he 
gave  the  finished  MS.  of  The  French  Revolu- 
tion to  his  wife:*  “I  know  not  whether  this 
book  is  worth  anything,  nor  what  the  world 
will  do  with  it,  or  misdo,  or  entirely  forbear  to 
do,  as  is  likeliest;  but  this  I could  tell  the 
world : You  have  not  had  for  a hundred  years 
any  book  that  comes  more  direct  and 
flamingly  from  the  heart  of  a living  man.” 
And  again  there  are  Goethe’s  lines : 


* Carlyle's  Life  in  London,  i.,  p.  89. 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE 


107 


Denn  es  muss  von  Herzen  gehen 
Was  auf  Herzen  wirken  soli. 

Literature  is  no  mechanical  product ; it  is, 
when  it  is  any  good  at  all,  the  offspring  of 
passion — “ simple,  sensuous,  and  passionate,” 
are  Milton’s  words  to  describe  what  a poem 
should  be;  and  prose  is  of  the  same  family. 
When  a book  reaches  the  heart  of — we  will 
not  say  a generation,  for  very  often  one 
generation  is  not  the  best  judge — but  of 
several  generations,  and  holds  a place  in  the 
thought  and  feeling  of  man  for  centuries 
together,  you  must  look  well  to  it  if  you  think 
it  did  not  come  from  a great  human  heart,  but 
was  the  mechanical  product  of  ingenuity  or 
artifice.  The  ancient  critic,  Longinus,  is  right, 
here  as  often,  when  he  says  that  “ sublimity 
is  the  echo  of  a great  soul.”* 

The  German  scholar  Norden,  in  his  book 
entitled  Kunstprosa,  comes  in  due  course  to 
the  writings  of  Paul  of  Tarsus.  “ 1 find  Paul 
hard  to  understand,”  he  says  very  honestly, 
but  he  finds  something  in  him  that  he 
recognises.  ‘‘  So  the  language  of  the  heart 


* Longinus  9,  2,  ui^os  yu.eyaXo<^po(Tw?/s  d-Triy^^T^/xa. 


io8  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 

was  born  again,”  says  this  critic;  ‘‘since  the 
hymn  of  Cleanthes,  nothing  had  been  written 
in  the  Greek  language  so  full  of  feeling  and  at 
the  same  time  so  splendid  {nichts  so  Inniges 
and  zugleich  so  Grandioses)  as  the  hymn  of 
Paul  on  love.”  Later  on  in  his  work  he  recurs 
to  this;  ‘‘Both  these  hymns  on  love  to  God 
and  love  to  men  (Romans  8,  31 ; i Cor.  13) 
have  given  back  to  the  Greek  language,  what 
had  been  lost  for  centuries — the  feeling 
{Innigkeit)  and  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Epopt 
(the  initiated)  quickened  by  his  union  with 
God.  . . . How  this  speech  of  the  heart  must 
have  struck  home  into  the  souls  of  men  accus- 
tomed to  listen  to  the  silly  verbosity  of  the 
sophists!  In  these  passages  the  diction  of  the 
Apostle  rises  to  the  height  of  Plato’s  in  the 
Phaedrus.'"* 

One  thing  at  least  is  clear  to  those  who  even 
in  a slight  degree  share  Noiden’s  knowledge 
of  the  period — that  Paul  thought  infinitely  less 
about  style  than  did  the  sophists,  who  thought 
of  nothing  else,  and  at  the  same  time  he 
achieved  what  they  never  reached.  How  did 


* Norden,  Kunstprosa  II.,  pp.  499,  459,  509. 


“ OTHERWISE  THAN  DISTRACTEDLY  ” 109 


he  manage  it  ? The  first  thing  in  style  is, 
as  Longinus  put  it,  a great  soul,  and  then 
real  thoughts  and  deep  feeling.  If  a man  will 
be  true  to  the  depths  of  him,  he  will  speak 
well.  Conversely,  when  we  find  life  and 
sunshine  in  the  words  of  a poet  or  a religious 
teacher — when  his  style  is  strong  and  pure 
with  the  simplicity  and  power  of  great  music — 
when  it  takes  us  back  into  the  very  sanctuary 
of  a man’s  spirit,  we  shall  expect  to  find  there 
things  of  eternal  significance;  and  truth  will 
be  one  of  them. 

The  rest  of  this  lecture  will  be  given  to 
the  attempt  to  get  behind  the  ink  and  paper 
of  the  books  of  the  early  Church,  to  ask 
not  only  what  the  writers  say,  but  what  they 
mean  and  what  they  are,  and  how  they  came 
to  mean  what  they  did  mean,  and  to  be  what 
they  were.  “Get  first,’’  wrote  Carlyle,  “into 
the  sphere  of  thought  by  which  it  is  so  much 
as  possible  to  judge  of  Luther,  or  of  any 
man  like  Luther,  otherwise  than  distractedly; 
we  may  then  begin  arguing  with  you.’’ 

First,  then,  let  us  study  St.  Paul  for  a little. 

Autobiography  is  not  the  most  cheerful  of 
words — so  many  books  with  this  label  have 


I lO 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


had  neither  Autos  nor  Bios  in  them;  the 
authors  so  often  have  not  lived  very  much 
nor  been  very  much.  But  every  real  book  is 
in  some  sense  autobiography.  Dull  as  books 
and  lectures  may  be,  they  are  apt  to  be 
duller  when  they  lack  some  autobiographic 
element,  tacit  or  explicit.  However  artfully 
the  writer  of  either  may  cloak  the  personal 
element,  Et  quorum  pars  magna  fui  is  in  every 
story. 

Carlyle  indicated  as  much  when  he  wrote, 
as  we  saw  in  a former  lecture,  of  Novalis  and 
his  books.*  Paul,  it  might  be  said,  never 
wrote  an  autobiography,  and  yet  never  wrote 
anything  else.  Imagine  a formal  auto- 
biography by  Paul:  “I  was  born  at  Tarsus, 
a city  of  Cilicia,  a citizen  of  no  mean  city,” — 
and  what  early  influences  played  upon  him, 
and  how  he  went  to  Jerusalem,  and  his  first 
impressions  of  it,  and  how  he  sat  at  the  feet 
of  Gamaliel,  till  Gamaliel  gave  such  an  un- 
certain note  about  the  Christian  movement 
that  the  pupil  saw  it  was  time  to  take  action 
of  his  own — ^and  so  on.  No,  if  he  had  done  it, 


See  p.  5Q. 


ST.  PAUL 


III 


there  would  have  been  all  the  usual  trouble 
about  such  works — the  delimitation  of  the 
provinces  of  Dichtung  and  Wahrheit ; and, 
besides,  a formal  work  of  such  a kind  by  Paul 
would  have  been  essentially  false  and  non- 
Pauline — how  could  the  real  Paul  ever  have 
spared  the  time,  even  in  prison,  for  such  in- 
trospection? Erasmus  called  Paul’s  style 
“pure  flame,”  and  there  could  hardly  be  an 
autobiography  that  came  half  so  flaming  from 
the  heart  of  a man  as  that  which  Paul  did 
not  write  at  all,  but  which  escaped  him  when 
he  was  dealing  with  other  matters. 

“O  wretched  man  that  I am!  Who  shall 
deliver  me  from  the  body  of  this  death?  . . . 
There  is  therefore  now  no  condemnation  to 
them  that  are  in  Christ  Jesus;  for  the  law  of 
the  spirit  of  life  in  Christ  Jesus  has  set  me 
free  from  the  law  of  sin  and  death.”  A 
passage  like  that  is  inexhaustibly  full  of  the 
man — how  are  we  to  judge  it,  till  we  tingle 
with  the  man’s  own  passion  for  righteousness, 
with  his  shame  of  failure,  and  the  unspeak- 
able joy  he  knows  in  the  given  life  in  Jesus 
Christ?  There  is  the  story  of  his  life  in  the 
phrase  at  the  head  of  several  epistles,  “the 


II2 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


slave  of  Jesus  Christ  ” — in  the  clause,  “ Who 
loved  me  and  gave  Himself  for  me  ” — in  the 
simple  utterance,  “ The  Lord  stood  by  me 
and  put  strength  into  me  ” — in  the  after- 
thought added,  almost  without  intending  it, 
to  the  Galatian  letter  when  it  was  finished : 
“ God  forbid  that  I should  glory  save  in  the 
Cross  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  by  whom  the 
world  is  crucified  to  me,  and  I to  the  world.”* 
Celsus,  in  his  True  Word,  the  first  great 
literary  attack  on  the  Church,fsays  that  every 
Christian,  of  whatever  sect,  quotes  that 
sentence.  There  may  be  many  things  in  Paul 
which,  like  Norden,  we  do  not  understand, 
or  to  which,  with  Luther,  we  may  say : 
” Brother  Paul,  this  argument  does  not  stick,” 
but  our  business  is  not  with  the  word  nor  the 
argument,  but  with  the  man.  Can  we  explain 


* An  interesting  and  sympathetic  account  of  Paul,  as  the 
real  interpreter  of  Jesus,  is  given  by  the  Jewish  scholar, 
Moriz  Friedlander,  in  the  last  chapter  of  his  Religiose 
Beviegungen  innerhalb  des  Judentums  im  Zeitalter  Jesu. 
One  of  his  phrases  must  serve  here : “ Paulus,  der 

geschworene  Feind  jeder  Halbheit  ” is  an  excellent  charac- 
terisation. 

t Written  about  178  a.d. 


HEBREWS 


113 

him,  if  we  have  never  troubled  to  share  or 
to  know  his  experience  ? 

Take  another  New  Testament  writer — the 
anonymous  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,  “ the  most  cultured  Greek  of  them 
all,”  as  his  critics  from  Origen*  to  Norden  and 
Dr.  J.  H.  Moulton  agree,  with  his  ‘‘masterly 
handling  ” of  ‘‘  all  the  delicate  shades  of  mean- 
ing ” of  which  the  Greek  literary  language 
of  his  time  was  capable — a man  who  has  given 
to  the  whole  Christian  Church  some  of  its 
most  moving  language  in  relation  to  Jesus 
Christ.  There  are,  indeed,  some  who  find  little 
in  this  epistle  but  old  and  obsolete  metaphor, 
awkward  enough  by  now — priest  and  altar, 
sacrifice  and  temple — to  say  nothing  of  Mel- 
chizedek,  and  a touch  of  rhetoric  which  some 
critics  say  they  feel  in  it.  But  when  one  tries 
to  get  an  effective  grip  of  the  man  and  his 
problem,  his  book  or  epistle  comes  home  in 
a new  way.  This  is  what  he  had  to  wrestle 
through — how  can  a man  have  a real  religion, 
capable  of  managing  a genuine  reconciliation 
of  the  universe  and  experience,  capable  of 


Quoted  by  Eusebius,  Eccl.  Hist,  vi.,  25. 
8 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


114 

keeping  him  from  temptation  and  carrying 
him  through  martyrdom,  if  he  cut  himself 
adrift  from  every  means  of  grace  of  which  Jew 
or  pagan  had  ever  conceived,  priest,  sacrifice, 
victim,  blood,  and  the  camp  of  Israel  ? When 
a man  has  fought  his  way  to  peace  through 
perplexities  like  these — perplexities  which  we 
can  never  understand  till  in  some  measure 
we  share  them — we  may  well  be  interested 
in  his  conclusion;  it  will  have  the  marks  of 
battle  on  it.  When  such  a man  speaks  to  us, 
let  us  watch  his  style — ^his  words  and  their 
order;  he  gives  us  a sentence,  full  and  com- 
plete, and  then  with  a sudden  leap  of  feeling 
comes  an  after-thought,  that  tells  us  as  much 
again.  “ Jesus  Christ  yesterday  and  to-day 
the  same — ^and  for  ever,”  he  adds.  Before 
we  criticise  him,  let  us  understand  him. 

The  Fourth  Gospel  is  in  many  ways  one 
of  the  most  perplexing  books  in  Christian 
literature.  If  we  study  it  on  a level  with  the 
other  three,  in  order  to  an  objective  history 
of  Jesus,  we  are  involved  in  the  greatest  diffi- 
culties. For  it  is  not  so  much  a history  of 
Jesus  as  men  knew  Him  in  Galilee,  as  a record 
pf  what  Jesus  had  been,  and  had  become. 


THE  FOURTH  GOSPEL 


to  a man  in  the  course  of  a long  life.  Our 
problem  here  is  tO'  explore  the  experience  and 
the  impulse  from  which  the  man  writes.  How 
does  a man  come  to  write  such  sentences  as ; 
“ Behold  the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  away 
the  sin  of  the  world.”  Such  a statement  is 
either  rhetoric  or  autobiography.  What  is 
the  life  so  written  ? Have  we  touched  it  ? Or 
again:  “God  so  loved  the  world  that  He 
gave  His  only-begotten  Son,  that  whosoever 
believeth  on  Him  should  not  perish,  but  have 
everlasting  life  ” — the  words  are  too  familiar, 
and  have  been  quoted  too  often,  we  feel. 

Upon  the  topmost  froth  of  thought; 
but  they  were  not  so  written.  What  has  taken 
the  writer  so  triumphantly  outside  all  national 
barriers,  Jew  as  he  seems  to  have  been  ? What 
has  given  him  his  conception  of  the  love  of 
God  taking  shape  in  a story  so  shocking  to 
Jew  and  Gentile  alike — contact  with  the  world, 
with  pain,  with  the  damned?  Or,  again,  what 
does  he  mean  by  “everlasting  life”?  What 
content  beyond  mere  duration  has  the  word 
for  him?  What  had  he  in  mind  in  the  way 
of  past  experience  when  he  wrote  of  the 
promise  of  the  Paraclete?  If  science  bids 


Ii6  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 

us  study  the  “life  history”  of  plant  and 
animal,  and  make  biology  and  not  morphology 
our  aim,  what  of  ideas  ? Too  often  we  study 
them  in  the  herbarium,  as  it  were,  or  the 
dissecting-room,  and  forget  the  soil  and  the 
sky  that  made  them  and  the  life  that  was  in 
them.  Is  there  an  author  who  has  suffered 
more  from  this  intellectual  slackness  on  the 
part  of  his  readers  than  the  writer  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel? 

I turn  now  to  the  Apocalypse,  and,  as  here 
we  reach  more  ordinary  people,  I propose  to 
linger  rather  longer  over  a crucial  and  most 
informing  passage.  In  doxology  we  come 
nearer  to  fact  than  in  dogma,  for  it  is  out  of 
doxology  that  historically  dogma  has  grown. 
The  primitive  Christian  first  went  through 
an  experience;  then  he  broke  out  in  thanks- 
giving and  doxology  for  it ; and  finally  he, 
and  other  people,  began  to  speculate  on  the 
relation  of  the  experience  so  stated  to  the 
general  sum  of  human  experience  and  know- 
ledge; and  the  result  of  this  speculation  was 
called,  in  the  language  of  the  day,  dogma. 
For  our  present  purpose  we  have  to  con- 
centrate attention  on  the  experience  as  the 


THE  APOCALYPSE  117 

primary  thing.  The  doxology  then  will  bring 
us  nearer  to  this  than  the  dogma. 

The  writer  of  the  Apocalypse,  whoever  he 
was,  remains  one  of  the  most  interesting 
figures  of  the  New  Testament.  He  wrote 
at  a time  when  the  Christian  movement  was 
recognised  for  what  it  was  by  the  Roman 
Government  and  was  treated  accordingly ; the 
sect  was  in  a fair  way  to  be  stamped  out 
in  blood.  Yet  his  book  is  full  of  scenes  and 
songs  of  triumph — “ I heard  the  voice  of 
harpers  harping  with  their  harps : and  they 
sung  as  it  were  a new  song.”*  He  represents 
a miserable  handful  of  slaves  and  abjects; 
he  counts  them  by  “thousands  of  thousands,” 
and  sees  them  glorified — “ these  are  they  that 
came  out  of  the  great  tribulation. ”f  Behind 
such  vision  lies  experience.  Like  all  prophets, 
spiritual,  political,  or  commercial,  he  reads  the 
future  out  of  the  present,  and,  from  his  picture 


*As  Wernle  suggests,  when  one  realises  the  clear  call 
the  writer  gives,  and  his  note  of  triumph  in  Jesus,  there  is 
little  wonder  that  the  martyrs  “ for  the  testimony  of  Jesus  ” 
valued  the  book;  and  perhaps  they  did  not  like  it  less  for 
its  borrowed  imagery — that  too  had  associations. 

t The  omission  of  the  definite  article  in  the  Authorised 
Version  obscures  the  situation. 


ii8  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 

of  the  future,  with  care  we  can  reconstruct  his 
experience  in  the  present.  And,  in  case  we 
cannot,  he  sums  it  up  several  times  in  his 
doxologies. 

The  first  of  these  will  serve  as  a starting- 
point.  Like  a Hebrew  psalmist,  he  sets  at 
the  beginning  the  keynote  of  the  music  he 
has  beaten  out.  “ To  Him  that  loved  us  and 
washed  us  from  our  sins  in  His  blood,  and 
made  us  kings  and  priests  to  God  and  His 
Father,  to  Him  be  the  glory  and  the  power 
for  ever;  Amen.” 

It  has  long  been  observed  that  the 
Apocalypse  depends  more  directly  on  books 
than  any  other  New  Testament  document, 
and  sometimes  in  a rather  curious  way.  Here 
the  writer  borrows  a phrase  from  Exodus 
(xix.  6):  ‘‘Ye  shall  be  unto  me  a kingdom  of 
priests  and  an  holy  nation.”  He  knew  well 
enough  that  this  ideal  for  Israel  had  not  been 
reached ; Israel  had  set  up  a single  man  as 
king  and  a separate  tribe  as  priests,  and  had 
abandoned  the  greater  conception  of  a nation 
in  which  every  man  was  king  and  priest.  The 
race  had  abdicated.  The  Christian  writers 
claim  the  promise  as  their  own — it  was 


THE  DOXOLOGY 


119 

certainly  derelict.  They  maintain  that  the 
followers  of  Jesus  are  in  effect  kings  and 
priests,  set  free  from  sin  and  standing  in  a 
personal  relation  to  God.  The  term  employed 
for  “king”  served  also  for  the  Roman 
Emperor.  But  “king”  and  “priest”  had 
in  antiquity  a peculiar  identity  of  suggestion. 
King  and  priest,  each  belonged  to  some 
guardian  god,  and  shared  his  divine  nature, 
while  each  stood  among  men  as  a man  set 
apart  and  sacred — each  was  tabu  in  short — 
the  god’s  own,  and  guarded  from  common 
touch  by  a divine  sanctity — ^and  each  again 
had  the  mystical  function  of  standing  between 
god  and  man,  of  mediating  and  bringing 
them  into  effective  relations.  So  much  for 
the  new  names  given  to  the  Christian  by  our 
writer. 

It  is  worth  while  to  see  to  whom  these 
names  are  given.  It  was  commonly  remarked 
for  centuries  that  the  Christians  came  from 
the  lowest  classes.  They  were  of  the  common 
people — “the  most  unlettered  sort,”  as  the 
educated  observed,  and  the  hopelessly  de- 
praved, as  more  decent  critics  noticed  with  a 
shudder.  “ Other  cults  call  for  those  who  are 


120 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


holy,  who  are  pure  from  all  stain,  and  clean 
of  hands,”  said  Celsus;  but  the  Christian  con- 
stituency consisted  of  ‘‘  sinners,”  precisely  as 
they  said : ‘‘You  mean  the  unjust,  the  thief,  the 
burglar,  the  prisoner,  the  robber  of  temple 
and  tomb ; whom  else  would  a brigand  invite 
to  join  him?”*  None  of  this  criticism  was 
too  strong.  Roman  slavery  produced  a class 
of  person  unknown  to  us.  ‘‘  Far-seeing  Zeus,” 
said  Homer,  long  before,  ‘‘takes  away  half 
a man’s  worth,  when  he  brings  the  day  of 
slavery  upon  him.”f  Often  in  Roman  days 
slavery  took  the  whole  away — ^everything  that 
made  the  man’s  arete,  the  essential  group  of 
qualities  and  faculties  that  in  combination 
make  him  human.  With  the  woman  it 
was  perhaps  worse.  The  ‘‘  hired  animalism  ” 
of  Tennyson’s  poem  stood  higher,  for  she 
had  a wage  for  her  shame,  and  the  slave- 
woman  had  not.  The  female  animal  almost 
stood  higher,  for  while  the  slave  had  the  same 
sex  she  had  not  the  beast’s  privilege  of 
bearing  young.  Man  and  woman,  the  slaves 
acknowledged  and  accepted  their  degradation 


* Quoted  by  Origen,  Contra  Celsum,  iii.,  59. 
t Odyssey,  xvii.,  322. 


THE  SLAVE 


I2I 


— and  the  lowest  stage  is  reached  when  that 
is  done.  Living  on  the  basis  of  their  own 
worthlessness,  what  wonder  if  they  justified 
the  free  man’s  contempt  for  the  slave  ? No 
one  had  hope  or  help  for  them.  “ I thank 
Thee,”  prayed  the  Jew,  ‘‘that  I am  a Jew  and 
not  a Gentile,  a man  and  not  a woman,  a 
freeman  and  not  a slave.”  The  Stoic  had 
a gospel  of  self-help  for  men  and  women  who 
retained  their  will-power.  There  were,  indeed, 
slaves,  as  there  were  free  men,  equal  to  this 
stern  gospel — there  was  Epictetus,  at  least — 
but  such  men  were  very  fev^  This  was  one 
of  the  things  that  wrecked  the  Roman  Empire 
— the  class  acknowledged  by  themselves,  as  by 
others,  to  be  below  redemption. 

The  first  thing  to  be  done  was  to  bring 
these  hopeless  people  to  another  opinion  about 
themselves.  The  Christian  went  to  the  slave 
and  told  him  that  the  Son  of  God  loved  him, 
and  had  died  for  him — £l  ransom.*  To  a mind 
philosophically  trained  the  phrase  was  in  those 


* Cf.  Matthew  xx.,  28.  The  many  phrases  and  analogies 
connected  with  “ ransom  ” and  “ redemption  ” gain  new 
meaning  for  us  when  we  think  what  a note  they  sounded  for 
the  slave. 


122 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


days  as  silly  as  it  was  repulsive.  But  the 
Christian  believed  it,  and  in  no  ordinary  way 
— he  believed  it  with  such  effect  that  the  slave 
came  to  believe  it  too,  and  became  a man 
again.  It  was  one  of  the  features  of  the  days 
of  persecution  that  slaves,  men,  women,  and 
girls,  had  found  a new  stamina,  a new  dignity. 
They  would  face  fire  and  torture  and  beast 
without  fear  or  flinching.  In  common  life 
they  began  to  shed  the  servile  vices;  they 
became  honest  and  pure;  they  “received  the 
Holy  Spirit,”  as  Christians  put  it,  and  showed 
an  extraordinary  gift  for  winning  men  by 
sheer  force  and  beauty  of  character.  The 
doxology  in  the  Apocalypse  answers  word  for 
word  to  the  facts.  To  find  the  ultimate 
philosophic  expression  and  account  of  what 
happened,  and  of  what  made  it  happen,  is  a 
secondary  matter;  the  first  thing  is  to  realise 
the  fact  in  its  wonder. 

In  the  third  century,  a short  but  very  re- 
markable little  book  was  written,  by  whom 
we  do  not  know.  Later  on  it  was  appended 
to  a tedious  production  known  as  the  Gospel 
of  Nicodemus,  and  there  it  is  still  to  be  read, 
perhaps  intact,  wonderful  in  its  contrast  with 


THE  HARROWING  OF  HELL 


123 


its  setting.*  It  is  the  oldest  story  of  the 
Harrowing  of  Hell.  It  tells  how  Christ,  as 
it  is  said  in  the  Creed,  “ descended  into  hell,” 
and  set  free  its  captives,  and  ascended  with 
them.  One  of  these  captives  tells  it  in  the 
first  person.  It  has  the  naive  sincerity  of  a 
true  poet,  and  the  large  and  honest  imagina- 
tion. The  story  begins  in  hell,  and  we  over- 
hear Satan  and  Hades  talking  with  some 
anxiety  as  to  what  may  follow  yet  from  the 
Crucifixion  of  Jesus;  for  now  “into  the  dark- 
ness there  dawned  as  it  were  the  light  of  the 
sun,  and  it  shone,  and  we  saw  one  another.” 
This  sudden  gleam  of  light,  and  especially 
the  imaginative  use  of  it  by  the  writer  in  the 
last  sentence,  bring  out  for  us  the  age-long 
darkness  of  the  grave  with  strange  feeling. 
A great  voice  like  thunder  is  bear'd  calling  on 
the  everlasting  gates  to  open  that  the  King  of 
Glory  may  come  in.  Hades  bids  make  fast 
the  gates  of  brass  and  defend  them;  but  the 
forefathers  who  had  been  with  him  from  the 
beginning  mock  him.  Again  the  voice 


* I think  the  English  reader  will  find  it  most  accessible 
in  Hone’s  Apocryphal  New  Testament. 


124 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


sounds,  and  Hades  asks  : “ Who  is  this  King  of 
Glory  ? ” The  answer  comes  : “A  Lord  strong 
and  mighty,  a Lord  mighty  in  war,”  and  at 
the  word  the  gate  of  brass  and  its  bars  of 
iron  are  shattered,  the  dead  are  loosed  from 
their  bonds,  “and  we  with  them,”  as  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  enters.  The  King  of  Glory 
stretches  forth  his  right  hand  and  raises  up 
Adam,  and  “ blesses  him  on  the  brow  with 
the  sign  of  the  cross”;  and  then,  with 
patriarchs,  prophets,  and  martyrs.  He  “ leaps 
forth”  from  Hades.  Still  holding  Adam  by 
the  hand.  He  brings  them  all  to  Paradise, 
where  Enoch  and  Elijah  meet  them,  and  then 
a more  interesting  figure.  To  him  the  fathers 
said:  “Who  art  thou  that  hast  the  look  of 
a robber,  and  what  is  the  cross  thou  bearest 
on  thy  shoulders?”  And  the  penitent  thief 
tells  them  his  story,  and  how,  when  he  came 
to  the  gate  of  Eden,  “ when  the  fiery  sword 
saw  the  sign  of  the  cross,  it  opened  to  me 
and  I came  in.”  And  then  the  story  ends, 
simply  enough : “ All  this  we  two  brothers 
saw  and  heard.” 

To  choose  a sentence  or  two  from  such  a 
piece  is  to  do  it  some  injustice,  but  a 


THE  NEW  LIFE 


125 

sympathetic  reader  will  feel  that  here  we  have 
a great  piece  of  imaginative  literature,  and 
he  will  ask  himself  from  what  impulse  it 
came.*  Surely  some  new  and  first  - hand 
experience  of  the  real  and  eternal  lies  behind 
every  such  creation,  and  we  have  again  to 
be  sure,  before  we  criticise,  that  we  under- 
stand whence  came  the  impulse  that  stirred 
the  poet  to  such  power  and  beauty.  It  is 
no  idle  enquiry,  for  experience  of  our  own 
is  involved  in  it. 

We  have  now  to  go  a step  further  and 
touch  upon  some  of  the  experiences  and  con- 
victions that  underlie  all  early  Christian 
literature,  and  I begin  with  the  new  life. 

St.  Paul  writes  to  his  friends  and  converts 
with  great  frankness  about  the  old  life  and 
the  new;  he  is  as  explicit  as  Celsus  himself. 
In  his  letter  to  the  Corinthian  church 
(i  Cor.  vi.  ii)  he  runs  over  a series  of  horrible 
and  mean  vices,  and  then  says  quite  bluntly: 
“And  such  were  some  of  you;  but  ye  are 


* That  it  went  to  the  heart  of  the  Church  is  shown  by  the 
frequency  with  which  it  was  treated  in  poetry ; e.g.,  by 
Prudentius,  Synesius,  and  Ephrem  the  Syrian.  The  hymn  of 
Synesius  upon  it  is  translated  by  Mrs.  Browning. 


126 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


washed,  but  ye  are  sanctified,  but  ye  are 
justified  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  and 
by  the  Spirit  of  our  God.”  He  knew  what 
the  streets  of  a great  Hellenistic  city  and  sea- 
port were  like — “ the  great  sinful  streets  of 
Naples  ” — and  he  and  his  converts  knew 
how  bad  the  old  life  had  been,  ‘‘  alienated 
from  God  and  without  hope  in  the  world.” 
Greek  culture,  as  we  know  it  in  literature  and 
art,  at  its  highest  and  most  glorious,  was  not 
the  fruit  of  Hellenistic  life  in  the  Roman 
Empire,  nor  is  it  representative  of  it.  But 
let  us  look  rather  at  the  new  life. 

One  of  the  telling  words  used  in  the  New 
Testament  to  describe  the  change  is  “En- 
lightened.” The  word  to-day  has  lost  its 
charm  and  wonder.  The  great  eighteenth- 
century  movement  of  Aufkldrung,  or  Illumina- 
tion, had  once,  perhaps,  hope  in  its  very  name ; 
but  that  has  died  away  into  a very  common 
and  dull  day.  The  Christian,  I think,  took 
the  word  from  the  Mysteries — ^a  symbol-word 
of  gladness.  With  eyes  shut  men  went  into 
the  holy  place;  there  was  a priest,  the  light- 
bringer ; and  in  trance,  perhaps,  or  in  vision  a 
great  light  shone  upon  them  as  they  drew 


THE  NEW  LIFE 


127 


near  to  their  god.*  The  Christian  took  the 
word ; for  him  it  was  truer  than  for  the  Greek 
and  the  Egyptian.  He  had  lived  in  darkness 
— with  the  understanding  darkened,  and  he 
meant  now  that  Christ,  Himself  the  true 
Phdtagdgos,-\  had  shone  upon  him  and 
brought  him  near  to  God;  and  now  he  lives 
and  moves  in  a new  hope  and  joy,  a hallowed 
being.  The  New  Testament  word  “ Saint  ” 
touches  the  same  order  of  ideas ; it  represents 
a person  set  apart  for  a God — aytos,  sacer, 
tabu — the  God’s  own,  and  immune  from 
unhallowed  touch.  It  is  good  to  linger  over 
the  phrases,  unstudied  and  spontaneous,  in 
which  the  Christian  writers  tell  of  the  new 
life — “ joy  unspeakable  and  full  of  glory.” 
Familiarity  tends  to  rob  us  of  them,  but  at 
a touch  of  the  old  experience  they  are  alive 
again. 

In  the  Epistle  of  Clement  to  the  Corinthians 
comes  a description  of  Christian  life  even  in 
Corinth.  ” A profound  and  rich  peace  was 
given  to  all,  and  an  insatiable  passion  for 

* The  description  depends  on  a passage  at  the  end  of 
Apuleius’  Golden  ^.?5. 

t Cf.  Clement  of  Alexandria,  Protrepticus,  120,  i. 


128 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


doing  good;  an  abundant  outpouring  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  also  fell  upon  all.”  Philanthropy, 
I am  afraid,  is  a dull  word,  like  most  long 
words  borrowed  from  the  Greek  and  the  Latin, 
to  describe  in  more  dignified  terms  the 
ordinary  Christian  virtues;  and  people  who 
value  themselves  to-day  will  have  nothing  to 
do  with  “philanthropy”  and  “doing  good.” 
They  are  almost  technical  terms,  dulled  by 
use  by  uninspired  people,  like  “oxide”  and 
“ the  subliminal  self.”  But  we  must  look  at 
words  as  they  come  first  from  the  poet-souls 
who  make  them,  trailing  clouds  of  glory,  and 
making  the  heart  beat  and  the  eye  brighten. 
One  of  the  historian’s  tasks  is  to  re-create  the 
past  by  means  of  worn-down  watchwords,  as 
the  numismatist  will  tell  you  the  history  of 
a dynasty  and  a civilisation  from  a series  of 
battered  coins.  They  are  dull  enough  now; 
but  back  to  the  beginning!  There  cannot 
have  been  many  people  with  “an  insatiable 
passion  for  doing  good  ” in  any  Grasco-Roman 
city;  and  what  a Godsend  even  a Corinthian 
Christian  must  have  been  with  such  a passion 
for  the  wrecks  and  waste-products  of  a com- 
mercial and  pleasure-loving  city  that  organised 


THE  NEW  LIFE 


129 


its  gains  and  its  pleasures  on  the  basis  of 
slavery ! Think  of  the  change  in  such  a man 
— the  new  dreams  that  haunt  him  of  a char- 
acter like  Christ’s,  the  new  passion  for  service 
of  his  Master,  the  new  standards ! “ Which  is 
ampler?”  asks  Tertullian,*  ‘‘to  say,  Thou 
shalt  not  kill ; or  to  teach.  Be  not  even  angry  ? 
Which  is  more  perfect,  to  forbid  adultery  or 
to  bid  refrain  from  a single  lustful  look?” 
Think  of  the  phrase  in  2 Peter  (ii.  14)  describ- 
ing a certain  type  of  person  ‘‘  having  eyes  full 
of  adultery” — ^and  later  Greek  literature  illus- 
trates what  numbers  pf  such  persons  there 
were  in  a Greek  town.  ‘‘  But  ye  are  washed,” 
says  St.  Paul.  ' 

It  is  not  merely  that  a change  has  been 
effected,  and  a great  one,  but  that  it  is  to 
continue;  it  is  to  be  a progressive  develop- 
ment. Paul  uses  a number  of  commercial 
terms  when  he  writes  to  Corinth,  and  by 
means  of  one  of  them  illustrates  his  conception 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  It  is  the  arrhabon,^  or 


* Apology,  45. 

f2  Cor.  i.  22;  v.  5.  The  reference  to  sealing  in  the 
first  passage  has  suggestions  worth  study.  The  seal  was 
the  one  way  of  protecting  property  in  a household  of  slaves 

9 


130 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


earnest,  that  God  gives  a man  as  a guarantee 
that  He  will  fulfil  His  promises  to  him.  God 
is  going  to  do  for  the  Christian  something  (as 
Paul  puts  it)  “exceeding  abundant,  above  all 
that  we  can  ask  or  think,”  and  meanwhile 
gives  him  a token  or  pledge  which  binds  God 
— ^and  that  is  the  Holy  Spirit.  So  much  has 
been  said  amiss  about  the  Holy  Spirit,  and 
such  difficult  psychological  problems  are 
connected  with  the  whole  matter,  that  state- 
ments of  this  kind  are  received  with  hesitation. 
But  Paul  is  not  talking  theories,  he  is 
speaking  from  experience ; and  that  experience 
we  have  to  re-capture  before  we  are  entitled 
to  dispute  his  phrase.  In  another  passage 
(Gal.  V.  22,  23)  he  speaks  of  the  fruits  of  the 
Spirit  as  “ love,  joy,  peace,  long-suffering, 
kindness,  goodness,  faith,  meekness,  and  self- 
mastery,”  and  he  adds  that  they  that  are 
Christ’s  have  “ crucified  the  flesh  with  the 
passions  and  the  lusts.”  The  line  of  a second 
century  poet  comes  back  to  one’s  mind  as 


(c/.  Clem.  Alex.,  Paed.,  iii.,  59),  and  it  is  a metaphor,  I 
think,  already  used  in  the  Mysteries  (c/.  Clem.  Alex.  Protr., 
120). 


THE  NEW  LIFE 


131 

one  thinks  of  this  glad  new  life  which  Paul 
describes — 

V er  novum,  ver  jam  canorum,  ver  renalus  orbis  est. 

“ New  spring,  singing  spring,  spring  the  world 
re-bom  ” — that  is  the  story  of  the  Church. 
Paul’s  list  of  fruits  is  very  interesting.  The 
last,  self-mastery,  was  a Stoic  virtue;  but  the 
rest  did  not  ripen  easily  in  the  Hellenistic 
world,  and  the  rocky  soil  and  Northern  slope 
of  the  Stoic  garden  were  too  hard  for  them. 
But  most  people  would  have  said  they  were 
not  virtues  for  men  at  all — rather  for  women 
and  slaves,  as  Nietzsche  and  his  followers 
would  say  to-day.  Yet  how  much  would  be 
lost  to  life  if  these  fruits  of  the  Spirit  were 
taken  away  or  ripened  no  more ! 

It  is  to  be  noted  that,  in  so  surntning  up 
the  fruits  of  the  Spirit,  Paul  holds  the  same 
outlook  as  Jesus.  It  was  He  who  brought 
these  virtues  into  their  new  place  and  sig- 
nificance, and  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
He  is  the  centre  of  all  this  Christian  move- 
ment. Men  in  the  second  century  were 
reading  the  four  Gospels  day  by  day  as  a 
part  of  Christian  life  and  practice;*  their  life 

* Justin,  Apology,  i.,  66,  67;  Clem.  Alex.,  Strom.,  vii.,  49. 


132 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


and  their  thought  are  Christooentric.  Men 
may  theorise  as  they  please  about  the  necessity 
of  a historical  base  or  a historical  element 
in  religion ; so  far  as  we  have  got,  experience 
shows  how  much  it  does  signify.  It  has  been 
said  that  in  every  age  the  condition  of 
religious  progress  is  the  return  to  the  historical 
Jesus.  In  every  age  we  are  apt  to  re-conceive 
Him  in  the  terms  of  our  own  day  and  our  own 
thought;  but  the  next  generation  has  other 
thoughts  and  other  ideals,  and  revolts  against 
those  of  its  parents.  So  long  as  the  Church 
turns  to  the  historical  Jesus — the  real  Jesus 
of  history — it  can  face  these  changes.  But  a 
Jesus  with  the  date-mark  of  a particular  school 
of  interpreters — an  eighteenth-century  Jesus 
or  a mid-Victorian  Jesus — is  not  to  be  thought 
of  for  a moment.  The  Gospel  message  is 
“ Come  unto  Me,”  and  the  function  of  the 
Church  is  to  bring  men  to  Christ  and  to 
leave  them  with  Him  to  learn  of  Him  for 
themselves. 

We  may  notice  in  the  next  place,  among 
the  experiences  of  the  early  Church,  that  it 
has  triumphed  over  nationalist  barriers. 
“ Thou  wast  slain/’  run  the  words  of  the  New 


“EVERY  KINDRED  AND  TONGUE”  133 


Song,  “ and  hast  redeemed  us  to  God  by  Thy 
blood  out  of  every  kindred  and  tongue  and 
people  and  nation.”  Paul  urges  the  same 
thing  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians  when 
he  emphasises  that  it  is  Jesus  Who  has  “ made 
peace” — He  is  the  great  reconciler.  It  may 
be  the  case  that,  as  some  critics  say,  Jesus 
never  spoke  the  words  at  the  end  of  the  First 
Gospel,  “Go  ye  into  all  the  world”;  but, 
as  Ignatius  says : “ He  that  truly  has  the 
word  of  Jesus  can  hear  His  silence  also,”* 
and  the  Christians  had  heard  it  and  had  gone 
into  all  the  world  before  Matthew  wrote.  A 
contemporary  Greek  writer  remarks  of  the 
philosophers  that  “ some  of  them  do  not  go 
to  the  people,  despairing,  perhaps,  of  their 
ability  to  make  the  many  better.”f  Socrates 

* Ignatius,  ad  Eph.  1 5-  It  is  worth  remembering  that 
Ignatius  was  already  on  his  way  to  martyrdom  when  he  wrote 
— early  in  the  second  century. 

t Dio  Chrysostom,  Or.,  xxxii.,  9 (to  the  Alexandrines) : 
Some,  aTreyvojKOTes  itrws  to  /Sekriov^  av  iroi^crai  rows  ttoAXovs; 
some,  like  the  Cynics,  degrade  philosophy ; and  it  is  rare  to 
get  a man  ready  to  face  ridicule  from  goodwill  and  care 
for  others.  Even  if  Dio  is  gently  suggesting  his  own 
virtues  here,  it  is  fair  to  say  that  he  did  frankly  preach 
morality  to  his  audiences.  On  the  unfriendly  attitude  of 
Pharisaism  to  the  conversion  of  Gentiles  to  Judaism,  see 


134 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


used  to  say  that  he  was  a “ citizen  of  the 
world,”  and  the  philosophic  schools  were 
recruited  from  all  races.  Greek  culture  and 
Roman  rule  were  tending  to  weld  the  races — 
” preparing  the  way  for  Christ,”  as  the  poet 
Prudentius  wrote  about  409  a.d.  But  the 
union  of  men  in  the  Church  was  a deeper 
one,  for  in  the  Church  there  was  a place  for 
the  slave,  as  we  have  seen,  but  he  left  the 
name  of  shame  outside.  It  is  said  that  the 
word  “ slave  ” is  not  found  among  the  in- 
scriptions of  the  Catacombs.  It  was  the 
Christian  doctrine  that  master  and  slave  were 
redeemed  in  the  same  way  by  the  same 
Saviour ; and  it  is  a historical  and  still  visible 
fact  that  if  you  begin  to  care  for  the  crucified 
Jesus,  everybody  else  who  cares  for  Him 
stands  in  a new  relation  to  you.  There  is  no 
bond  like  it.  Master  and  slave  met  at  the 
Eucharist  in  the  early  .Church,  to  com- 
memorate the  dying  of  their  common  Master, 
Who  “ took  upon  Him  the  form  of  a slave,”  and 

Moriz  Friedlander,  Die  Religibsen  Bewegungen  des  Judentums 
im  Zeitalter  Jesu,  p.  31.  Contrast  St.  Paul — a friend  of 
mine  has  pointed  out  that  Paul’s  emotion  is  very  liable  to 
break  up  his  grammar,  when  he  thinks  of  his  mission  to 
the  Gentiles  or  of  Jesus  Christ. 


SLAVE  AND  CASTE 


135 


died  a slave’s  death;  and  a new  force  bound 
them  together  in  a new  spirit.  And  when  it 
came  to  martyrdom,  a story  like  that  of 
Felicitas  and  Perpetua  shows  how  distinctions 
of  lady  and  slave  fell  away  in  shame  and 
suffering  shared  for  the  One  name.  There 
have  been  many  reformations  of  Hinduism, 
but  none  strong  enough  to  prevail  in  the  long 
run  over  caste.  The  love  of  Jesus  did  this 
for  the  Church  from  the  beginning,  and  does 
it  for  India  tO“day.  The  ultimate  God  of  the 
Graeco-Roman  world  was  the  abstraction 
summed  up,  as  we  have  seen,  as  “ the  deifica- 
tion of  the  word  Not  ” — beyond  and  above 
being  itself,  and  far  from  the  contact  of  any 
emotion — a.  God  without  love.  What  a con- 
trast to  the  Christian’s  Friend  who  chose  the 
Cross!  What  could  such  a negation  do  to 
touch  or  help  the  world,  even  if  philosophy 
had  allowed  such  a thought  ? 

We  have  to  study  this  early  Church  till  we 
understand  it.  My  last  instance  for  to-day 
shall  be  a phrase  which  of  itself  proclaims  the 
difference  of  outlook  that  the  centuries  have 
made.  In  some  ten  passages  of  the  New 
Testament  we  find  “the  foundation  of  the 


136  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


world,”  in  connection  with  things  and  events 
dated  before  it,  or  contemporaneously  with 
it,  by  the  writers  or  speakers.  We  are  not 
used  to-day  to  vision  of  such  range;  and  we 
have  in  consequence  to  shed  a whole  vocabu- 
lary, and  perhaps  ‘‘  Providence  ” itself  would 
go  with  them  if  we  fortunately  were  not  apt 
to  be  a little  illogical. 

But  the  difference  of  outlook  is  still  more 
marked  when  we  notice  what  kind  of  things 
the  early  Christian  conceived  as  reaching 
through  all  history  from  ‘‘  before  the  founda- 
tion of  the  Cosmos  ” — ^for  he  uses  a technical 
term  of  Greek  philosophy.  He  speaks  of 
‘‘names  written  in  the  book  of  the  Lamb 
slain,  from  the  foundation  of  the  world” — 
this  comes  twice  in  the  Apocalypse,  while  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians  the  writer  speaks 
of  himself  and  his  friends  as  ‘‘  chosen  in  Christ 
before  the  foundation  of  the  world.”  Finally 
the  writer  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  represents 
Christ  as  speaking  of  the  glory  which  God  had 
given  Him,  ‘‘for  Thou  lovedst  Me  before  the 
foundation  of  the  world.” 

Frankly,  there  is  not  a phrase  among  all 
these  but  comes  with  a shock,  almost  painful, 


“ THE  FOUNDATION  OF  THE  WORLD  ” 137 


to  a man  bred  in  the  thoughts  of  our  day. 
They  are  repugnant  to  “ the  reason  of  the 
present  age,”  nor  to  the  reason  of  this  age 
alone,  as  St.  Paul  very  well  saw.  He  was 
left  in  no  manner  of  doubt  as  to  the  judgment 
of  rational  and  educated  people  upon  what 
he  had  to  say^ — he,  a poor  Jewish  spermologos, 
a journalist,  as  we  might  say  to-day.  It  is  per- 
haps remarkable  how  rarely  the  theologians  of 
to-day  deal  with  the  conceptions  we  have 
picked  out  from'  these  first-century  documents, 
when  one  reflects  that  the  Christians  of  most 
ages  would  not  have  recognised  their  faith,  if 
stripped  of  them,  for  the  same  thing  at  all. 

The  early  Christian  conceived  that  to  God 
Jesus  Christ  was  not  accidental,  nor  yet  the 
unforeseen  product  of  an  evolution  that  might 
have  miscarried.  He  held  that  there  is  a 
thread  running  through  all  history;  that 
nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet;  that  a long 
progress  intelligible  to  reason  is  also  guided 
by  reason,  and  that  to  no  random  goal.  He 
held  this  because  it  was  clear  to  him  from  what 
he  saw,  and  from  what  he  experienced,  that 
Jesus  Christ  was  lifting  men  to  a new  plane 
of  life  and  thought,  with  the  prospect  of  a 


138  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


boundless  vista  of  future  developments  up- 
ward. A religion  is  to  be  judged,  not  only  by 
what  it  achieves  in  the  present,  but  by  the 
germinating  forces  it  perpetually  renews  in  the 
human  heart — by  its  promise  of  power  in  the 
progressive  disruption  of  every  exhausted  con- 
ception in  favour  of  a higher.  In  Jesus  the 
early  Christian  found  such  a hope,  and  he 
refused  to  believe  Him  to  be  accidental  or 
anything  short  of  God’s  highest  revelation  of 
Himself.  And,  in  the  clearest  and  most 
definite  terms  he  could  find,  he  said  so — he 
said  that,  before  the  world  was,  God  saw  the 
end  for  which  He  worked,  without  accidents 
and  without  after-thoughts. 

He  went  further;  for,  grasping  that  the 
essence  of  Christianity  is  the  realisation  by 
each  individual  soul  that  it  is  the  object  of 
God’s  individual  love,  he  boldly  carried  this 
to  the  furthest  point  of  possible  emphasis — 
God  knew  His  own  before  He  ever  set  hand 
to  creation — He  fixed  beforehand  the  day  and 
hour,  and  worked  ahead  for  those  He  loved, 
as  a father  (in  the  parable)  starts  working 
to  win  the  bread  before  the  child  is  hungry, 
and  even  before  the  child  is  bom.  God  knew. 


THE  PURPOSEFUL  LOVE  OF  GOD  139 


he  said,  and  God  arranged,  at  once  for  the 
great  Cosmos  and  for  the  last  and  least  of 
those  who  were  to  find  in  the  Good  Shepherd  a 
new  access  to  the  heart  of  God.  With  one 
metaphor  and  another — a name  written  in  a 
book,  the  paschal  Lamb,  the  laying-down  of 
the  Cosmos — with  endless  variety  of  phrase, 
he  tried  to  drive  home  to  every  man  the 
supreme  fact  of  God’s  love  of  each  man.  His 
long  prevision  of  each  and  His  long  provi- 
dence for  each.  He  knew  very  well  he  was 
using  metaphor.  “ For  want  of  His  name,” 
said  Clement,  ‘‘we  use  beautiful  names,  that 
the  mind  may  not  wander  at  large,  but  may 
rest  on  these.”*  At  all  hazards  he  would 
make  clear  the  great  fact  of  God’s  love  as 
antecedent  to  all  things — of  Christ  as  the  em- 
bodiment of  purposeful  love — of  the  universe 
itself  in  all  its  range  as  a Cosmos  indeed, 
inspired  and  achieved  by  love,  and  subservient 
in  its  last  detail  to  love.  And  he  aimed  at 
doing  this  by  use  of  the  best  language  avail- 
able to  him,  and  very  telling  language  it  was. 

Such  thoughts  may  not  commend  them- 
selves to  us;  we  may  be  afraid  of  them,  as 


Clem.  Alex.,  Strom,  ii.,  74,  75. 


140 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


too  large,  too  sweeping,  too  bold.  But  two 
things  may  be  said.  These  beliefs  have  a 
great  history,  as  worthy  to  be  studied  as  any 
other  history — for  we  are  bound  to  study  the 
past  till  we  understand  it,  and  absorb  it,  if 
we  are  to  make  steady  progress  in  the 
present.  And,  further,  a faith  congenial  to 
“ the  reason  and  the  humanity  of  the  present 
age  ” (as  history  can  show  in  many  a surprising 
instance)  is  not  always  very  sure  of  the  respect 
of  the  next  age.  “ A man’s  reach  should 
exceed  his  grasp,”  as  Browning  said.  We 
need  a faith  larger  than  we  can  be  quite  easy 
about,  if  it  is  to  be  of  much  real  use  to  us. 

I end  with  what  I began  with — this : we 
have  to  reckon,  as  serious  people,  with  this 
story  of  the  Church;  to  criticise  it,  not  from 
without  but  from  within;  to  understand  how 
men  came  to  speak  as  they  spoke,  and  to  feel 
as  they  felt.  Criticism,  to  be  just,  must  be 
identification.  That  is  the  duty  before  us. 
Before  we  decide  as  to  the  final  truth  of  what 
they  said,  we  must  know  to  the  full,  and  from 
within,  the  evidence  from  which  they  spoke, 
and  the  experience  which  gave  them  their 
premisses. 


LECTURE  V 

Jesus  in  the  Christian  Centuries 

OUR  subject  in  this  lecture  is  Jesus  Christ 
in  the  Christian  centuries.  We  shall 
not  for  the  moment  deal  with  the  truth 
of  the  Christian  religion,  for  our  aim  through- 
out is  to  enlarge  our  basis  of  facts  before  we 
embark  upon  opinion.  We  shall  try  to  look 
into  what  the  .religion,  true  or  false,  has 
actually  effected;  and  we  shall  take  the  belief 
in  Jesus  as  itself  a historical  factor,  in  order, 
first  of  all,  by  measuring  it  against  the  forces 
with  which  it  has  had  to  contend,  to  reach 
some  approximate  measure  of  its  real  power. 
In  doing  this  we  ought  to  include  some 
inquiry  as  to  the  sort  of  men  and  women 
affected — people  like  ourselves,  with  every 
variety  of  temperament  and  temptation. 
For  there  is  nothing  externally  that  marks 
the  Church  as  a peculiar  body  of  persons, 
unless,  indeed,  we  recognise,  as  we  may,  that 
there  is  something  unique  in  the  range  of 


142 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


character  and  disposition  to  which  it  appeals, 
in  the  variety  of  natures  which  it  wins  and 
uses.*  In  the  next  place,  we  ought  to  ask 
whether  a factor  that  works  so  uniformly  for 
the  good  of  mankind,  and,  with  all  deductions 
made  that  should  be  made  for  mistakes  and 
wrong  tempers  incidental  to  all  human  nature, 
has  forwarded  the  growth  and  development 
of  the  human  race,  is,  after  all,  a mistake; 
whether,  as  some  burning  spirits  suggest,  it 
ought  to  be  the  main  business  of  all  illuminated 
people  to  rid  the  world  of  the  Christian' 
religion.  We  might  go  on  to  ask  ourselves 
whether  it  could  be  dispensed  with,  and,  if 
so,  by  what  it  could  be  replaced  — by 
philosophy  or  economic  changes,  or  both — 
or  something  else.  And  then  we  ought  to 
ask  whether  there  is  not  some  test  of  truth 
in  the  correspondence  between  the  needs  of 
the  human  soul  and  the  Christian  Gospel. 
It  is  very  often  better  for  a lecturer  to  ask 
questions  than  to  answer  them;  so,  while  my 
own  way  of  dealing  with  them  may  not 


* A closer  study  of  the  great  Christian  biographies  would 
be  a great  reinforcement  to  the  Churches  to-day. 


THE  POWER  OF  THE  NAME 


143 


escape  notice,  I will  not  attempt  categoric 
answers  to  these  questions.  What  I urge, 
however,  is  that  everything  turns  on  how 
deeply  we  care  to  go  into  realities;  and  a 
large  part  of  the  lecture  will  be  a repeated 
reminder  that  we  need  to  go  very  deep 
indeed,  if  we  wish  to  understand  a human  soul. 

Let  us  begin  by  examining  a contribution 
which  the  belief  in  Jesus  has  made  to  human 
life,  which  is  apt  to  be  overlooked.  It  is  what 
we  may  call,  in  language  not  very  readily  in- 
telligible to  Anglo-Saxons  of  our  day,  but 
instantly  significant  to  men  of  other  races  and 
other  ages,  the  “ Power  of  the  Name.”  And 
here  we  shall  have  to  mjake  a short  excursion 
into  Folklore. 

Herodotus,  in  a well-known  passage,  tells 
us  that  the  women  of  Miletus  would  never 
call  their  husbands  by  name.*  All  over  the 
world  we  come  on  the  same  reluctance  to 
reveal  names.  We  meet  it  in  the  story  of 
Lohengrin,  in  the  English  fairy-tale,  most 
readily  identified  by  the  refrain  that  is  its  gist : 
Ninny,  ninny,  not. 

Your  name’s  Tot  Tit  Tot! — 


* Herodotus,  i.,  146. 


144 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


and  in  the  strange  fact,  which  Macrobius  tells 
us,  that  the  priests  of  ancient  Rome  had  a 
secret  name  for  their  city.*  For  man,  in  the 
primitive  stage,  name  and  thing  tend  to  be 
one  in  essence.  The  name  is  not  a mere 
convention;  in  some  deep,  mysterious  bond 
of  nature  it  is  the  thing ; and  if  anyone  knows 
the  name,  he  is  master  in  some  measure  of  the 
thing.  Thus,  if  he  learns  the  name  of  his  enemy 
and  has  some  familiar  spirit  (for  instance) 
whose  name  he  also  knows,  he  can  link  these 
names  in  magic  to  his  enemy’s  undoing. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  Christian  Church, 
in  the  Mediterranean  world,  as  to-day  among 
the  animistic  peoples,  we  find  the  minds  of 
men  infested  with  a belief,  which  to  us  is 
almost  incomprehensible,  in  a whole  world  of 
spiritual  beings  or  daemons,  as  the  Greeks 
called  them.  Elaborate  accounts  of  the 
demons  and  their  nature  are  given  by 
Plutarch  and  Apuleius.  They  lived  in  the 
air;  they  were  of  mixed  nature — something 


* Saturnalia,  Vu.,  g,  S-  Ipsius  vero  urbis  nomen  etiam  doc- 
tissimis  ignoratum  est,  caventibus  Romanis  ne  quod  saepe 
adversus  urbes  hostium  fecisse  se  noverant  ipsi  quoque  hostili 
evocatione  paterentur  si  tutelae  suae  nomen  divulgaretur. 


DEMONS 


145 


between  gods  and  men,  between  whom  they 
might  serve  as  intermediaries.  But  they  had 
many  activities  of  their  own — good  and  bad; 
and  they  were  generally  recognised  as  the 
chief  dangers  of  human  life.  Some  of  them 
were  beneficent — guardian  powers ; and,  from 
one  point  of  view,  even  the  human  soul  itself 
might  perhaps  be  a daemon.  The  Egyptians 
assigned  the  human  body,  area  by  area,  to 
thirty-six  demons,  whose  aid  would  be  in- 
voked according  to  the  part  of  the  body 
affected  by  disease.  Perhaps  every  passion 
was  induced  by  some  daemon.  Mischief  of 
every  kind  was  due  to  them — ^every  ill  legend 
of  the  gods  was  their  work ; every  ugly,  cruel, 
or  obscene  type  of  worship  or  sacrifice  was 
inspired  by  them;  and  they  were  constantly 
the  authors  of  disease  and  insanity.  Such 
words  as  daemoniac,  nympholept,  enthusiasm, 
obsessed,  possessed,  hag-ridden  or  bewitched 
— along  with  incantation,  enchantment,  and 
charm — tell,  for  those  who  can  understand 
them,  a long  story  of  human  trouble.* 


* It  may  be  permissible  to  refer  to  an  article  of  my  own 
in  the  Hibbert  Journal,  vol.  xi.,  no.  i (Oct.  1912),  on  " The 
Daemon  Environment  of  the  Primitive  Christians.” 


10 


146  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


If  a man,  then,  knew  the  names  and 
affinities  of  these  daemon  powers,  he  could 
use  them,  for  the  Neo-Platonist  philosopher 
argued  that  the  universe  is  a unity,  all  things 
linked  to  all,  but  some  things  more  subtly 
connected;  and  therefore  if,  as  a modern 
chemist  uses  are-agent  to  act  on  some  element 
or  compound,  a man  will  take  in  his  hand 
a certain  stone,  and,  pronouncing  a certain 
name,  will  add  a set  form  of  prescribed 
words,  he  is  also  automatically  bound  to 
control  some  dcemon-power.*  This,  of  course, 
he  can  set  to  harry  anyone  whose  name  he 
knows.  This  is  the  essence  of  all  magic. 

So  far  I have  used  the  statements  of 
Classical  and  non-Christian  writers.  This  is 
supplemented  by  modern  evidence.  Under 
the  dominion  of  spirits,  the  animistic 
heathen  is  “ bound  by  three  fetters — fear, 
demon-worship,  and  fate.  . . . Even  his  own 
soul  is  a hostile  power  against  which  he  must 


* Cf.  Clem.  Alex.,  Protr.,  58.  The  Indian  name  for  the 
form  of  words  is  mantra.  See  C.  F.  Andrews’  Renaissance  in 
India,  Appendix  V.,  for  Mrs.  Besant’s  catechism.  “ Q.  Does 
the  order  of  the  words  matter?  A.  Yes.  Q.  Can  a mantra 
be  translated?  A.  If  it  be  translated  it  loses  its  use." 


DEMONS 


147 


ever  be  on  his  guard.  It  is  fond  of  leaving 
him;  it  allows  itself  to  be  enticed  away  from 
him ; it  refuses  to  accept  benefits  from  him. 
. . . Animism  seems  devised  for  purpose  of 
tormenting  men  and  hindering  them  from 
enjoying  life.  To  that  must  be  added  fear  of 
the  dead,  of  demons,  of  the  thousand  spirits 
of  earth,  air,  water,  mountains,  and  trees.”* 
Hinduism  has  incorporated  much  from  such 
old  beliefs,  and  has  thirty  crore  of  gods 
of  one  kind  and  another — three  hundred 
millions. 

Muhammadanism  and  Buddhism  alike  have 
failed  to  break  the  power  of  these  spirits; 
Mrs.  Besant  and  the  Theosophists  in  India 
invoke  modern  science  to  defend  the  use  of 

* Warneck,  Living  Forces  of  the  Gospel  (tr.),  pp.  108,  109. 
See  also  the  most  interesting  book  of  my  friend,  Mr.  J.  C. 
Lawson:  Ancient  Greek  Religion  and  Modern  Greek  Folk- 
lore, on  the  survival  into  modern  Greece  of  the  belief  in 
nymphs  and  worse  things.  Mr.  Lawson  tells  us  (pp.  48,  13 1) 
how  he  once  saw  a Nereid — or  at  least  something  which  his 
guide  knew  to  be  one,  and  would  not  wait  to  allow  Mr. 
Lawson  a closer  investigation.  Mr.  Lawson  says  (p.  281) 
that  people  born  on  Saturday  are  credited  with  the  power  to 
see  their  guardian  spirits,  as  well  as  second  sight.  His 
remarks  on  the  survival  of  paganism  in  the  Greek  Church 
(p.  47)  deserve  study — it  is  the  outcome  of  compromise 
centuries  ago. 


148  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


charms,  spells,  incantations,  idolatry,  and 
caste;  they  are  covered  by  the  vague  term 
“'magnetism.”  “The  water  of  the  Ganges 
was  sacred  because  it  was  magnetised  by  the 
great  rishis.  Hindus  bathed  at  the  time  of 
the  eclipse  to  wash  off  the  bad  magnetism. 
Idols  were  to  be  worshipped  because  they 
were  ‘ centres  of  magnetism  ’ which  is  put 
into  them  by  highly  spiritual  persons.  The 
religious  marks  were  worn  on  the  forehead, 
because  the  ‘ materials  used  have  magnetic 
properties.’  ”* 

Evidence  for  all  this  belief  in  daemons  was 
found — ^and  is  found — in  abundance  in  all 
illnesses,t  especially  sudden  ones  and  those 
that  affect  the  mind,  in  every  unfamiliar  occur- 
rence, and  in  the  oracles;  and  plenty  was 
no  doubt  supplied  by  men  who  had  any 
natural  gifts  for  hypnotism  and  legerdemain. 
But  the  main  point  is  that,  evidence  or  no 


* Andrews’  Renaissance  in  India,  p.  149. 
f Mr.  John  Howell,  of  the  Baptist  Missionary  Society,  tells 
me  that,  on  the  Congo,  natives  stricken  with  sleeping-sickness 
will  change  their  names  (with  proper  ceremony)  to  hide  their 
identity  and  so  escape  the  spirits  which  have  sent  the 
disease.  To  be  called,  even  accidentally,  by  their  former 
names  troubles  them  greatly. 


DEMONS 


149 


evidence,  the  human  mind  was,  and  is,  in 
such  systems  utterly  depressed  and  paralysed. 

Traces  of  the  daemon-belief,  common  to 
Jews  as  well  as  Gentiles,  abound  in  the  New 
Testament.  The  “prince  of  the  power  of  the 
air  that  now  worketh  in  the  sons  of 
disobedience  ” (Eph.  ii.  2),  the  familiar  “ prin- 
cipalities and  powers,’’  can  be  supplemented 
freely,  but  two  crucial  passages  will  suffice. 
This,  says  Paul,  “none  of  the  rulers  of  this 
world  knew;  for,  if  they  had  known,  they 
would  not  have  crucified  the  Lord  of  glory  ’’ 
(i  Cor.  ii.  8).  And,  again,  “ we  wrestle,  not 
against  flesh  and  blood,  but  against  princi- 
palities, against  powers,*  against  the  world- 
lords  of  this  darkness,  against  spiritual  beings 
of  evil  in  the  sky  above  us ; so  take  to 
yourselves  the  panoply  of  God’’  (Eph.  vi.  12). 

When,  then,  from  all  this  we  turn  to  “ the 
name  that  is  above  every  name,’’  and  read 
that  at  it  the  knees  shall  bow  of  things  in 
the  sky  (Phil.  ii.  10),  the  old  phrase  takes  on  a 


* Cf.  also  Romans  viii.  38,  39:  “I  am  persuaded  that 
. . . neither  principalities  nor  powers  . . . shall  be  able  to 
separate  us  from  the  love  of  God  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus 
our  Lord.” 


150  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 

new  meaning.* * * §  The  magician  lets  loose  upon 
us  all  his  allies — or  they  may  come  against  us 
on  their  own  account — evil  daemons,  deceiving 
spirits,  powers  of  darkness,  disease,-and  terror 
— but  we  have  a Name  that  is  above  every 
name.  “ Even  the  very  name  of  Jesus  is 
terrible  to  the  daemons,”  wrote  Justin  Martyr, 
tenderest  and  most  beautiful  of  philosophers. f 
‘‘  This,”  wrote  Tatian,  speaking  of  the  Gospel, 
“ ends  our  slavery  in  the  world  and  rescues 
us  from  rulers  manifold  and  ten  thousand 
tyrants. “ I was  now  taught,”  writes  a 
modern  Japanese  Christian,  Utschimura  by 
name,  “ that  there  was  only  one  God,  and 
not  many  — over  eight  millions  — as  I had 
formerly  believed.  Christian  monotheism 
laid  its  axe  at  the  root  of  my  superstition. 
. . . One  God,  not  many^ — that  was  a glad 
message  to  my  soul.”§  “There  used  to  be 
fairies  here,”  said  an  old  woman  in  the  High- 


* I do  not  suggest  that  this  is  its  only  meaning. 

t Justin,  Dialogue  ■with  Trypho,  30.  Justin  and  Tatian 
belong  to  the  middle  second  century. 

X Tatian,  29. 

§ Warneck,  Living  Forces  of  the  Gospel,  p.  21 1. 


DEMONS 


iSi 

lands  to  a friend  of  mine,  “ but  the  Gospel 
came  and  drove  them  away.” 

One  of  the  worst  effects  of  this  subjuga- 
tion to  daemons  is  the  hopeless  fatalism  it 
induces.  Every  impulse  is  the  work  of  a 
daemon;  no  effort  is  of  any  use;  a man  is 
a plaything  of  devil-powers,  and  his  life  is 
governed  by  stars  above  him.  ‘‘  It  kills  man’s 
nobler  nature,  and  degrades  him  to  a piece 
of  mechanism.  . . . The  very  will  for  freedom 
is  bound.  . . . Exceptions  to  the  average  are 
more  rare  than  among  civilised  nations.”* 
“We,”  writes  Tatian,  on  the  other  hand,  “are 
above  Fate,  and,  instead  of  daemons  that 
deceive,  we  have  learnt  one  Master  that 
deceiveth  not,”  and  he  specially  mentions 
Astrology  as  one  of  the  evils  from  which  he 
has  been  delivered.t  It  is  a curious  reflection 
that  Astrology  was  the  earliest  form  of 
scientific  determinism. 

Now  let  us  sum  up  the  matter.  We  shall 
not  be  in  a hurry  to  commit  ourselves  to  the 


* Warneck,  Living  Forces  of  the  Gospel,  p.  121. 
t Tatian,  7,  8,  9.  Compare  a very  interesting  discussion 
by  Tacitus,  Annals,  vi.,  56.  See  Franz  Cumont,  Astrology  and 
Religion  among  the  Greeks  and  Romans  (1912). 


152 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


belief  that  there  are  such  powers  of  evil  about 
us,  though  men  who  know  Paganism  at  first 
hand  sometimes  lean  to  the  idea,  and  modern 
science  has  no  evidence  that  they  do  not  exist, 
and  is  indeed  invoked  (not  very  skilfully)  to 
explain  them.  But  we  shall  note  that,  what- 
ever the  truth  about  daemons,  where  Jesus 
Christ  comes  in  any  real  way  into  the  hearts 
of  men.  He  liberates  them  from  all  fears  of 
supernatural  enemies.  He  takes  the  terror 
out  of  life  by  making  it  possible — indeed, 
inevitable — that  men  live  in  the  sunshine  and 
warmth  of  God’s  love,  “ children  of  love,”  as 
an  early  Christian  writer  puts  it;*  and  there 
is  no  other  religion  with  anything  like  the 
bright  atmosphere  of  love  that  the  Incarnation 
makes.  The  terrors  go  like  the  night-fears  of 
children  when  the  room  is  flooded  with  light, 
and  one  they  love  stands  by  them.  The  mind 
is  relieved  of  an  intolerable  incubus,  that  has 
militated  more  and  more  against  its  powers; 
and  morality  is  made  possible.  Where 
animistic  beliefs  rule,  all  things  are  allowed 
to  the  mighty  man  with  a strong  soul;  other 


* Barnabas,  9,  8. 


DEMONS 


153 


men  are  bound  by  custom;  he  is  free  to  do 
what  will  secure  his  strength — a.  curious  co- 
incidence between  the  crudest  heathenism  and 
the  philosophy  of  Nietzsche.  Where  Christ 
comes,  morality  is  changed  from  custom  into 
the  spontaneous  overflow  of  love  to  Him. 
Whatever  our  judgment  upon  Christ  — 
whether  we  count  Christianity  pure  delusion 
or  half  delusion — it  does  not  alter  the  fact  that 
by  the  belief  in  Him  men  are  set  free  to 
think  in  peace  of  mind,  and  are  lifted  out  of 
the  slough  of  selfishness  which  superstition 
always  makes.  It  becomes  possible  to  appeal 
to  conscience,  and  still  more  to  a new  love 
for  Jesus  Christ,  that  carries  men  far  in  all 
that  makes  for  good.  The  savage  eats  his 
enemy  to  make  his  own  heart  braver;  the 
Christian,  if  he  takes  Jesus  seriously,  identifies 
himself  with  his  enemy  in  quite  another  way. 
The  Cross  teaches  us  a new  spirit  in  which 
to  approach  those  who  hate  us. 

One  thing  more  has  to  be  added  on  this 
point.  The  religion  of  the  Graeco-Roman 
civilisation,  in  which  St.  Paul  moved,  like  the 
religion  of  civilised  India  to-day,  had  many 
rites  and  ceremonies  and  sacred  legends,  full 


154 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


of  cruelty  and  obscenity.  The  purer  spirits,  like 
Plutarch,  regretted  this,  and  tried  to  explain 
that  such  things  must  be  the  work  of  evil 
daemons — gods  could  not  wish  them;  and  yet 
it  was  possible,  Plutarch  clearly  felt,  that  even 
the  obscene  thing  was  a symbol  of  something 
great  and  true.  In  fact,  he  could  not  break 
with  tradition.  Perhaps  human  sacrifices  no 
longer  continued  in  his  day ; the  point  is 
doubtful;  but  the  shrines  of  Aphrodite  still 
kept  harlots,  hierodules,  whose  service  and 
whose  earnings  supported  the  temple,  and 
whose  life  was  therefore  hardly  sinful.*  The 
same  thing  still  prevails  in  modern  Hinduism. 
The  dedication  of  little  children  to  such 
temples  for  such  purposes  is  revolting  to  the 


* The  temple  of  Aphrodite  at  Corinth,  Strabo  says  (c. 
378),  had  at  one  time  more  than  a thousand  hierodules, 
“ whom  both  men  and  women  dedicated  to  the  goddess  ” ; 
the  temple  at  Comana,  in  his  own  day,  had  six  thousand 
(Strabo,  c.  535,  cf.  J.  G.  Frazer,  Adonis,  p.  23);  in  Judaism 
they  were  prohibited  (Deut.  xxiii.  18),  though  the  regular 
Hebrew  word  for  a harlot  means  “ consecrated  woman  ” 
(q'deshah).  For  modern  India,  cf.  Meredith  Townsend, 
Asia  and  Europe,  pp.  17,  loi  : “When,  in  Lord  Dalhousie’s 
time,  a Bill  was  drawn  for  the  prevention  of  overt  obscenity, 
it  was  necessary  to  insert  a clause  that  the  Act  should  not 
apply  to  any  temple  or  religious  emblem.” 


CLEAN  RELIGION 


155 


better  minds  of  India,  but  it  is  still  religion. 
We  need  not  dwell  on  such  things.  Jesus 
Christ  finally  lifted  religion  out  of  any  region 
in  which  cruelty  or  uncleanness  can  be 
associated  with  it,  and  made  the  very  word 
inaccessible  to  such  taints,  associating  it  with 
truth  and  peace  and  quietness,  the  service 
of  men  and  a spiritual  love  of  God. 

In  all  this,  whatever  our  final  decision  as 
to  Christ,  it  is  fairly  clear  for  those  who  care 
for  verifiable  fact  that  the  belief  in  Jesus  has 
worked  for  the  good  of  men,  and  especially 
of  women.  The  significance  of  this  comes 
out  when  we  study  modem  Indian  move- 
ments, and  realise  how  for  the  Vedantist,  as 
for  Plutarch  and  the  Neo-Platonist,  there  is 
a refined  esoteric  teaching  for  the  initiate, 
while  the  crowd  may  go  on  as  before  with 
the  old  wickedness,  miscalled  religion.  The 
Christian  Gospel  has  the  same  implications 
for  all  men,  educated  or  uneducated,  in  every 
relation  of  life,  the  same  ideal  of  conduct  and 
of  truth.  “One  is  your  Master.” 

As  our  next  instance  of  the  working  of  the 
belief  in  Jesus,  we  may  take  the  conviction 
that  each  individual  man,  however  insignifi- 


156  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


cant,  is  one  “for  whom  Christ  died.”  The 
phrase  is  Paul’s.  I will  give  three  cases  where 
it  has  been  quoted  or  paraphrased,  to  show 
how  it  works. 

About  the  year  412  a.d.  a new  governor 
came  from  Constantinople  to  Tripoli,  and 
began  to  misuse  the  people  he  had  to  govern. 
Synesius,  the  most  charming  figure  of  the 
century,  hunter  and  scholar  and  philosopher, 
a lover  of  books  and  dogs,  and  now  bishop 
of  the  place  all  against  his  own  inclination 
and  sense  of  fitness,  wrote  boldly  to  the 
governor,  and  told  him  he  was  using  men  as 
if  they  were  cheap;  but  “precious  among 
creatures  is  man,  precious  in  that  for  him 
Christ  was  crucified.”*  Synesius  had  not  been 
quite  sure  in  his  own  mind  that  he  was 
properly  and  fully  Christian,  but  need  brought 
him  to  realise  this  aspect  of  the  death  of 
Jesus. 

When  Kett  led  his  rebellion  in  Norfolk, 
some  envoy  of  the  Court  came  down  to 
negotiate  with  him,  and  spoke  of  Kett’s 
followers  as  “ villeins.”  Kett’s  answer  is  worth 


* Synesius,  Epist.  57,  1388c. 


“FOR  WHOM  CHRIST  DIED’’ 


157 


remembering : “ Call  no  man  villein  who  was 
redeemed  by  the  precious  blood-shedding  of 
Jesus  Christ.’’ 

The  third  instance  is  one,  the  source  of 
which  I have  lost.  It  comes  from  the 
eighteenth  century,  I think.  A man,  injured 
in  some  accident,  was  brought  into  a hospital, 
very  near  death,  it  seemed.  One  of  the 
surgeons  proposed  some  drastic  treatment, 
adding,  fiat  experimentum  in  corpora  vili — 
the  easy  quotation  we  all  know.  From  the 
table,  on  which  the  injured  man  lay  silent, 
came  a Latin  answer : Non  ita  vile  pro  quo 
Christas  mortaus  est. 

In  an  earlier  lecture  I suggested  that  one 
of  the  tests  we  may  apply  to  a religion  is  its 
power  to  protect  men  against  us.  Here,  in 
this  old  belief,  which  embodies  the  very 
central  proposition  of  the  Gospel,  that  Christ 
died  for  every  man,  is,  I think,  the  most 
powerful  safeguard  that  the  poor,  the 
oppressed,  the  black  man,  and  “ ordinary 
people”  have  ever  had  against  the  great, 
whether  kings  or  civil  servants,  experts 
and  specialists,  parliaments  or  plutocrats. 
Nothing  so  far  in  India  has  really  shattered 


158  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


caste  except  Christ.  If  Christ  died  for  the 
pariah,  it  cannot  defile  the  rest  of  us  to  touch 
one  whom  Christ  loved. 

A missionary  has  told  me  a tale  from 
Bengal,  which  illustrates  the  matter.  Village 
people,  returning  to  their  village,  found  a dead 
woman  at  the  road-side,  a little  child  beside 
her,  alive  and  trying  to  wake  her.  No'  one 
would  touch  the  woman  or  the  child;  they 
were  wanderers,  of  unknown  caste:  and 

religion  forbade,  till  some  Christian  converts 
came  along,  whose  religion  knew  no  caste. 

Even  so  sympathetic  a student  of  Jesus 
Christ  as  Wilhelm  Bousset  counts  it  some- 
thing of  a defect  in  orthodox  Christianity 
that  its  system  has  not  room  for  Bismarck — 
“ If  we  accept  in  its  entirety  this  conception, 
if,  that  is,  we  take  from  modern  life  its  very 
essence,  and  force  it  to  self-renunciation,  we 
shall  have  absolutely  to  cast  on  one  side  such 
complete  and  great  figures  as  those  of  Goethe 
and  Bismarck.”  That  may  be  so.  The  ideals 
of  Bismarck  are  not  those  associated  with 
the  Cross ; but  which  mean  more  for  human 
good  and  happiness,  or  for  progress  ? We 
have  to  realise  that  where  Christ  has  touched 


TYNDALE 


159 


human  character  in  earnest,  the  Bismarck 
ideals  have  been  challenged  at  once,  and  all 
the  school  of  Bistnarck  has  always  realised  the 
danger  of  a free  Gospel.  A tame-cat  clergy, 
with  a gospel  of  a mailed  fist,  may  be 
tolerable;  but  men,  in  whom  Christ  lives, 
and  men  prepared  to  champion  their  fellow- 
men  in  Christ’s  spirit — these  are  intolerable 
in  any  community  ruled  by  the  ideals  of 
Bismarck,  English,  German,  Russian,  or 
Roman. 

Let  us  take  an  illustration.  William 
Tyndale,  “ further  ripened  in  the  knowledge  of 
God’s  Word  ” at  Cambridge,  went  to  be  chap- 
lain in  the  house  of  Sir  John  Walsh  at  Little 
Sodbury;  and  there,  in  controversy  with  a 
learned  man  at  his  employer’s  table,  he  broke 
out  with  the  words : “If  God  spare  my  life, 
ere  many  years  I will  cause  a boy  that  driveth 
the  plough  shall  know  more  of  the  Scripture 
than  thou  doest.’’  His  life  was  spared,  and 
he  printed  that  English  Testament,  which, 
with  corrections  and  revisions  far  less  sig- 
nificant than  we  think,  we  still  use.*  He  was 

* Cf.  Demaus,  William  Tyndale  (ed.  2),  p.  234,  on  the  reason 
for  this. 


i6o 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


carried  further,  and  wrote  Of  the  Obedience 
of  a Christian  Man,  and  other  works,  which 
did  not  commend  themselves  to  those  in 
authority.*  Here  is  his  conclusion:  “The 
Gospel  hath  another  freedom  with  her  than 
the  temporal  regiment  [i.e,  government]. 
Though  every  man’s  body  and  goods  be  under 
the  king,  do  he  right  or  wrong,  yet  is  God’s 
word  free  and  .above  the  king;  so  that  the 
worst  in  the  realm  may  tell  the  king,  if  he 
do  him  wrong,  that  he  doth  naught,  and  other- 
wise than  God  hath  commanded  him;  and  so 
warn  him  to  avoid  the  wrath  of  God.’’  The 
seventeenth  century  shows  what  direct 
association  with  the  Bible  in  English  meant 
— in  the  planting  of  New  England  and  the 
Civil  War.f  “ The  worst  in  the  realm  may 
tell  the  king,’’  and  they  did,  to  some 
effect;  and  the  results  of  seventeenth-century 
Puritanism  in  the  history  of  the  emancipa- 


* The  significance  of  Tyndale’s  work  may  be  divined  from 
the  extraordinary  and  violent  attack  made  upon  him  by 
Sir  Thomas  More,  who  devoted  more  than  a thousand  folio 
pages  to  him. 

t On  Bible-reading,  see  G.  M.  Trevelyan,  England  under 
the  Stuarts,  p.  6o. 


CHRISTIAN  FREEDOM 


i6i 


tion  of  mankind  are  still  to  receive  additions. 
Does  not  Germany  itself  owe  to  Luther,  and 
his  resolve  to  make  the  Bible  a people’s  book,* 
more  than  to  the  Bismarck  school?  If  there 
are  those  who  do  not  see  the  relation  between 
the  belief  in  Christ  and  human  liberty,  at 
all  events  the  dread  felt  by  governments  in 
the  last  four  hundred  years  for  people  who 
take  the  Bible  seriously  should  be  evidence 
enough  — whether  these  governments  be 
Spanish  Courts  or  American  Presidents  and 
Cabinets  fearful  of  slave-holders.  It  is  not  only 
that  men  possessed  of  the  faith  in  Christ  will 
assert  the  manhood  and  the  rights  of  others, 
but  their  own,  modestly  it  may  be,  but 
doggedly.  But  we  need  not  turn  to  former 
centuries.  What  is  the  meaning  of  the  dislike 
felt,  and  put  into  word  and  action,  by  govern- 
ment officials,  traders,  exploiters  of  native 
races,  and  rubber-dealers — reputable  as  well 
as  indefensible — to  the  missionary,  but  simply 
this  ? That  here  is  a man  who,  in  his  faith 
that  Christ  died  for  the  black  man,  is  pre- 

* “ This  book  is  to  be  written  in  the  simplest  language 
that  all  may  understand  it  ” — Luther,  letter  of  30  March, 
1522. 


II 


i62 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


pared  to  insist  that  the  white  man  shall  not 
abuse  him,  whether  his  motive  be  private  gain 
or  good  government.  Christ’s  servant  will 
be  the  friend  of  the  people  for  whom  Christ 
died ; he  may  be  misguided,  and  he  will  often 
be  very  inconvenient;  but  it  means  that, 
wherever  the  missionary  is,  there  will  be  a 
reference  of  everything — trade,  government, 
and  personal  conduct — to  eternal  standards 
rather  than  to  a local  magistrate’s  sense  of 
expediency. 

But  we  can  go  a good  deal  further,  if  we 
will  look  a little  more  into  men.  For  we  have 
to  recognise  that  the  belief  in  Jesus  Christ 
has  not  merely  been  a restraining  influence 
which  has  kept  men  from  abusing  their 
powers,  but  a deeper  stimulus,  which  has 
worked  in  a progressive  training  of  conscience 
and  a new  attitude  toward  those  who  need 
help  and  care.  For  instance,  the  late  Dr. 
Verrall  said  that  the  radical  disease,  of  which, 
more  than  of  anything  else,  ancient  civilisation 
perished,  was  an  imperfect  ideal  of  woman.* 
No  one  who  is  familiar  with  ancient  literature 


EiUripides  the  Rationalist,  p.  ill,  note, 


CHRIST  AND  WOMAN 


163 


can  deny  this  low  estimate,  which  comes  out 
most  clearly  when  speakers  and  writers  deal 
without  emphasis  with  the  ordinary  ways  of 
life.  It  is  the  same  in  India:  “Day  and 
night,”  say  the  Laws  of  Manu,  “must  women 
be  kept  in  dependence  by  the  male  members 
of  the  family;  they  are  never  fit  for  inde- 
pendence; they  are  as  impure  as  falsehood 
itself ; this  is  a fixed  rule.”  It  seems  clear 
that  in  the  earliest  Indian  as  in  the  earliest 
Greek  literature  woman  is  given  a higher 
place  than  she  had  later.  This  is  significant. 
Why,  as  civilisation  advanced,  should  the 
belief  in  woman  decline?  In  the  story  of 
the  Church  it  is  the  other  way.  From  the 
first  Christians  have  tended  to  take  their 
Master’s  view  of  woman,  and  have  held  “ there 
is  neither  male  nor  female.”  Their  methods 
of  carrying  out  His  principles,  consistently 
with  the  standards  of  decency  that  have  from 
time  to  time  prevailed  around  them,  show 
curious  deflections,  but  it  remains  that  the 
Church  has  steadily  recognised  the  dignity  of 
woman. 

Nowhere  in  Classical  literature — -perhaps 
nowhere  in  non-Christian  literature — is  there 


164  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


a teacher  of  men  who  is  recorded  to  have 
taken  the  interest  in  children  that  Jesus  did. 
The  exposure  of  , new-born  children  was 
common  in  Greece,  and  Plato  and  Aristotle 
tolerated  it  in  their  ideal  Commonwealths. 
The  plots  of  plays  and  romances  turn  upon  it 
with  wearisome  iteration.  So  that  it  was  not 
idly  that  the  early  Christian  apologists 
emphasised  the  fact  that  Christians  do  not 
abandon  their  own  offspring  to  death  or  the 
brothel,  and  keep  parrots.*  “ The  childless 
man  falls  short  of  the  perfection  of  nature,” 
says  Clement  of  Alexandria. f “ Who  are  the 
two  or  three  gathering  in  the  name  of  Christ, 
among  whom  the  Lord  is  in  the  midst?  Does 
He  not  mean  man,  wife,  and  child  by  the  three, 
seeing  woman  is  made  to  match  man  by 
God?”$  We  are  apt  to  attribute  a certain 
monopoly  in  some  vices  to  Southern 
Europeans,  and  it  is  startling  to  find  in  the 
Icelandic  Saga  of  the  Burnt  Njal  such  a 
passage  as  this  : “ This  is  the  beginning  of  our 


* Clem.  Alex.,  Paed.,  iii.,  30. 
t Clem.  Alex.,  Strovi.,  ii.,  139,  5. 
tCIem.  Alex.,  Strom.,  iii.,  68,  i, 


EXPOSURE  OF  CHILDREN  165 

laws  ” (the  Christian  law-giver  speaks),  “ that 
all  men  shall  be  Christians  here  in  the  land 
and  believe  in  God,  the  Father,  the  Son,  and 
the  Holy  Ghost,  but  leave  off  all  idol-worship, 
not  expose  children  to  perish,  and  not  eat 
horseflesh.”* 

Again,  there  is  slavery,  deeply  rooted  in 
ancient  life,  the  gangrene  at  once  of  morality 
and  industry,  and  it  lasted  on  into  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Here  it  is  curious  to  note 
how  men,  who  theoretically  believed  in  the 
complete  inspiration  of  the  whole  Bible, 
brought  a higher  criticism  to  bear,  and  saw 
at  a glance  that  the  ‘‘  mysterious  destiny  ” 
assigned  to  Ham’s  descendants  in  virtue  of 
drunken  Noah’s  foolish  curse  was  not  of  equal 
significance  with  Christ’s  death  for  the  negro 
slave.f 

The  belief  in  Jesus  has  given  men  a keener 
insight  and  a warmer  and  quicker  sympathy; 

* The  Burnt  Njal,  § loi  (Dasent's  translation), 
t Is  it  worth  while  noting  that  they  were  not  content 
with  “ soothing  and  cheering  the  victims  with  hopes  of 
immense  and  inexpensive  happiness  in  another  world  when 
the  process  of  working  them  to  premature  death  in  the 
service  of  the  rich  is  complete  in  this,”  as  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 
suggests  ? 


i66 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


it  has  waked  the  dedicated  spirit  and  taught 
new  ways  of  service.  Believing  heart  and 
soul  in  Jesus’  death  for  men,  Christians  have 
given  their  lives  to  help  their  neighbours  in 
the  obvious  duties  of  neighbourliness  (which 
as  Jesus  said,  the  publicans  also  do),  to  re- 
lieve poverty  and  to  study  its  prevention,  and, 
above  all,  to  train  the  moral  standards  of 
their  fellow-men,  and  to  bring  into  their  lives 
that  experience  of  Christ  to  which  they  owe 
all  themselves.  This  sense  of  being  able  to 
lead  men  to  a living  Christ  who  will  do  every- 
thing for  them  — the  very  keynote  of  all 
Christian  service — stands  or  falls  with  the 
belief  in  Christ.  What  other  religion  has  such 
a message  of  joy?  Where  are  people,  who 
can  keep  it  right  into  old  age,  poverty  and 
pain,  apart  from  Christ?  What  other  Gospel 
is  there  than  His?  Ethics  are  splendid 
subjects  for  discussion  and  for  declamation; 
Christian  principles  have  won  much  admira- 
tion; but  where,  apart  from  belief  in  Christ, 
is  the  force  that  can  make  anything  of  them  ? 
Think  how  that  has  stimulated  men  to  lives 
like  their  Master’s.  “ Christ,”  wrote  Wycliffe, 
“ saith  within  us  every  day:  This  I suffered 


THE  IMPULSE  TO  SERVICE  167 


for  thee,  what  dost  thou  suffer  for  me?”* 
Men,  as  we  can  see  all  over  the  world,  are 
sporadically  capable  of  wonderful  lives  of 
service  and  beauty;  but  when  it  comes  to 
the  use  of  poor  material,  who  will  make  saints 
of  that?  Yet  the  belief  in  Christ  has  done 
it  and  does  it  still,  affording  the  motive  that 
makes  the  consecrated  life  a thing  of  increas- 
ing power.  Let  us  ask  ourselves  what  is  the 
significance  of  the  amount  and  quality  of 
impulse  that  makes  men  missionaries  and 
keeps  them  ? Life  among  a primitive  race  is 
apt  to  be  hateful,  stripped  of  all  the  amenities 
we  most  prize,  and  exposed  to  everything  that 
jars  the  nerves,  from  incessant  vermin  to  inter- 
mittent murder  ;t  what  is  it  that  takes  men 


* Christus  dicit  in  nobis  cotidie : Hoc  passus  sum  pro  te,  quid 
pateris  pro  me  ? See  Lechler,  John  Wycliffe  and  his  English 
Precursors  (2nd  edition,  Engl,  tr.),  p.  273,  n. 

t Cf.  Livingstone,  Travels  in  South  Africa,  chapter  xii. 
(end) : “ During  a nine  weeks’  tour  I had  been  in  closer 
contact  with  heathens  than  I had  ever  been  before;  and 
though  all  were  as  kind  and  attentive  to  me  as  possible, 
yet  to  endure  the  dancing,  roaring,  and  singing,  the  jesting, 
grumbling,  quarrelling,  and  murderings  of  these  children  of 
nature,  was  the  severest  penance  I had  yet  undergone  in  the 
course  of  my  missionary  duties.  I thence  derived  a more  in- 
tense disgust  of  paganism  than  I had  hitherto  felt,  and 


i68 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


and  women  into  it  and  keeps  them  there  glad 
and  eager — without  books  or  friends,  and 
their  children  thousands  of  miles  away  ? This  is 
one  of  the  effects  of  the  Belief  in  Jesus  Christ. 

Plato,  long  before  Jesus  was  bom,  spoke  to 
men  of  a last  judgment,  at  which  Minos, 
naked,  should  with  very  soul  contemplate  the 
very  soul  of  each  in  turn  immediately  after 
death,  “ alone,  without  a kinsman  beside  him, 
all  the  trappings  of  his  life  left  behind  on 
earth.”* *  Other  men  wove  apocalypses  round 
myths  after  Plato ; and  no  doubt  it  contributed 
something  to  morality.  But  think  of  the  con- 
trast of  these  payths  with  the  Christian 
conviction  of  the  Great  White  Throne — no 
myth,  but  a certainty. 

Tuba  mirum  spar  gens  sonum 
Per  sepulcra  regionum 
Cogit  omnes  ante  thronum. 

Mors  stupebit  et  natura, 

Cum  resurget  creatura 
Judicanti  responsura. 


formed  a greatly  elevated  opinion  of  the  effects  of  missions 
in  the  south,  among  tribes  which  are  reported  to  have  been 
as  savage  as  the  Makololo.” 

* Gtrgias,  523  E. 


THE  GREAT  WHITE  THRONE  169 


Look  at  these  lines — their  strange  simplicity 
of  language,  so  closely  in  touch  with  the  awful 
simplicity  of  the  thought,  their  freedom  from 
artifice,  their  austere  beauty — no  random 
products  of  happy  accident,  nor  the  ingenious 
work  of  artifice.  The  whole  scene  lives  and 
moves  before  the  poet’s  eyes — he  does  not 
frame  it,  he  can  hardly  be  said  even  to  imagine 
it — there  it  is;  and  in  nine  words  he  draws 
it,  with  no  syllable  of  comment  or  reflection. 
Is  there  anywhere  in  human  speech  so  much 
in  nine  words  ? And  then  a new  thought 
burns  with  pain  in  the  poet’s  heart — for  he 
grasps  that  he  is  no  mere  spectator — he  stands 
alone  before  the  Throne;  so  far  as  he  is 
concerned,  heaven  and  earth  have  fled  away, 
as  in  the  great  description  in  the  Apocalypse; 
and  he  cries  aloud: 

Quid  sum  miser  tunc  dicturus. 

Quern  patronum  rogaturus, 

Cum  vix  justus  sit  securust 

What  has  this  belief  carried  with  it — this 
recognition  that  the  world  and  the  individual 
are  judged  in  the  last  resort  by  Jesus  Christ, 
that  His  standards  prevail,  that  the  last  word 


170 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


is  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fulness 
of  Christ  ? That  from  the  scene  every 
vindictive  element  is  eliminated,  makes  all 
more  serious.  Through  the  steady  facing  of 
this  ultimate  judgment  of  all  life  by  God,  in 
accordance  with  the  standards  set  in  the 
holiness  and  tenderness  of  Jesus  Christ,  the 
Christian  community  has  achieved  and  kept 
a new  recognition  of  the  responsibility  of  the 
individual,  with  the  result  of  added  concentra- 
tion on  the  training  of  the  soul.  Goethe 
speaks  of  “ what  an  inaccessible  stronghold 
that  man  possesses  who  is  always  in  earnest 
with  himself  and  with  the  things  around  him.” 
How  could  a man  be  more  in  earnest  with 
himself  and  with  the  things  around  him  than 
by  living  as  Christians  have  constantly  done 
in  full  view  of  the  Great  White  Throne? 
Think  of  the  self-criticism  induced — of  the 
steady  reference  of  everything  to  Christ’s 
standards  from  beginning  to  end — of  the 
spiritual  force  there  is  for  the  individual 
Christian  in  the  consciousness  of  his  nexus 
with  Christ,  past,  present,  and  eternal.  It 
is  possible  to  measure  something  of  what  it 
all  means  by  remarking  what  happens  when 


THE  GREAT  WHITE  THRONE 


171 

the  belief  disappears — a.  lowering  of  tone  and 
a certain  hardening.  If  Christian  teaching 
here  be  set  against  Stoic  or  Buddhist,  the 
contrast  is  illuminating.  Which  has  laid  most 
stress  on  the  seriousness  of  life,  and  on  the 
importance  of  the  individual  man,  and  done 
it  most  effectively  ? And  human  progress 
depends  at  once  on  the  value  set  by  all  upon 
the  individual  and  the  earnestness  with  which 
he  lives  his  life.  In  these  matters  there  are 
few  things  in  history  to  match  for  significance 
and  worth  the  plain  Gospel  of  the  Christian 
Church,  that  Christ  died  for  the  man,  and 
Christ  will  judge  him. 

But  beside  the  historical  effect  of  this 
doctrine,  we  have  to  study  its  origin.  How 
came  the  Christian  community,  within  one 
generation  of  Calvary,  to  the  conviction  that 
the  historical  Jesus,  whom  they  had  known, 
with  whom  they  had  talked  and  travelled — 
a crucified  provincial,  and  one  of  many  such — 
was  to  sit  upon  the  judgment-seat  of  the 
universe  ? The  cross  and  the  throne  were 
surely  incompatible  ideas;  and  yet  they  are 
linked  deliberately — and  for  the  sake  of  a 
man  whom  they  had  passed  on  the  street. 


172 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


What  was  the  experience  that  led  the  fol- 
lowers of  Jesus  to  a faith  like  this  ? 

“ The  love  of  Christ  constrains  us,”  said 
Paul.  After  all,  if  we  wish  to  understand 
Christianity,  we  must  come  closer  in  to  it, 
and  consider,  not  merely  what  it  has  done  to 
safeguard  and  to  develope  society,  but  what 
it  is  for  those  to  whom  it  yields  most  of  its 
meaning.  What  has  come  from  the  sense 
that  the  Christian  has  always  had,  clearly  or 
dimly — of  being  the  object  of  the  love  of 
Christ,  of  having  been  sought  by  Him,  and 
found,  and  redeemed  by  Him,  of  being  to 
Christ  not  a mere  item  of  humanity,  but  a 
person  and  dear  to  Him  ? What  has  been 
the  effect  of  the  peace  and  joy  of  belonging  to 
Him,  of  being  His?  Here  it  may  be  objected 
that  this  is  just  Christian  folklore — not  a very 
impressive  criticism;  but  once  more  we  will 
look  into  the  thing,  and  try  to  be  sure  that  we 
understand  it,  before  we  pronounce  upon  it. 

Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson,  in  one  of  his  essays, 
suggests  that  to  “most  of  the  best  men”  the 
whole  conception  of  miserable  sinners  re- 
deemed by  Jesus  Christ  is  “simply  without 
any  meaning  at  all.”  So,  too,  it  appears  to 


FORGIVENESS 


173 


animistic  savages,  who  are  mostly  not  very 
conscious  of  any  sinfulness  or  of  much  respon- 
sibility. But  with  men  who  grapple  with  life 
in  earnest,  and  find  how,  when  it  is  taken 
seriously,  it  teems  with  problems  of  action 
and  responsibility,  a more  severe  sense  is 
found  of  what  is  asked  of  them.  “ The  contest 
with  Evil,  we  feel,  is  the  essence  of  our  moral 
life.  But  then,  on  the  other  hand,  the  contest, 
our  faith  must  suggest,  is  relevant  to  world- 
issues,  somehow  essential  to  the  whole.  In 
fighting  for  Good  we  are  assisting  something 
real  that  is  divine.”  These,  again,  are  Mr. 
Lowes  Dickinson’s  words  in  the  same  essay; 
they  represent,  apparently,  his  own  view ; they 
are  certainly  very  like  what  a Christian  would 
have  said.  But  a Christian  would  add : 
Supposing  that,  in  this  contest  relevant  to 
world-issues,  where,  in  fighting  for  Good,  I 
ought  to  be  assisting  something  real  that  is 
divine,  I have  in  point  of  fact  failed — ^fallen, 
that  is,  below  what,  I see,  was  the  ideal 
conduct  and  was  perhaps  possible?  Seneca, 
the  Stoic,  felt  , something  of  this,  and  used 
to  survey  every  night  his  day’s  failures  and 
guccesses:  ‘‘I  hide  nothing  from  myelf;  I 


174 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


pass  over  nothing.  For  why  should  I be 
afraid  of  any  of  my  errors,  when  I can  say ; 
‘ See  that  you  do  it  no  more,  now  I forgive 
you.’  ”*  Seneca  was  a lovable  man,  but  even 
his  friends  have  to  own  that  other  people, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  did  not  forgive  him  quite 
so  easily.  At  all  events,  there  are  many,  and 
these  among  the  best  of  men,  who  cannot 
forgive  themselves  and  have  not  done  it — 
men  who  feel  in  sober  earnest  that  if  they 
are  not  to  be  burdened  for  ever  with  past 
failure,  if  they  are  to  be  clear  of  old  taints, 
if  they  are  to  be  relieved  of  the  obstacles  that, 
as  a result  of  the  characters  they  have 
developed,  block  their  access  to  other  men, 
it  must  be  by  another,  and  that  this  other 
is  in  plain  fact  Christ  Himself.  That  is  the 
common  Christian  belief,  shared  by  all  the 
Christian  communities;  and,  if  Mr.  Lowes 
Dickinson  is  right,  “most  of  the  best  men’’ 
must,  ex  hypothesi,  be  outside  those  com- 
munities. Each  man  must  decide  this  for 
himself;  but  our  present  concern  is  to  see 
what  the  love  of  Jesus  is  for  those  who  find 


* Seneca,  de  ira,  iii.,  36,  3. 


VICTORY  IN  CHRIST 


175 


most  in  Him,  and  one  point,  on  which  they 
are  all  agreed,  is  this  belief  that  in  Him  the 
sin  of  the  past  is  taken  away.  They  certainly 
live  on  the  basis  of  being  able,  by  His  strength 
daily  given,  to  overcome  the  repeated  impulse 
of  evil  from  without  or  from  within,  and  of 
being,  in  the  New  Testament  phrase,  “kept 
by  the  power  of  God.”  “We  are  more  than 
conquerors  through  Him  that  loved  us.” 
That  is  the  Christian  language,  right  or 
wrong. 

With  this  aspect  of  Christ  as  the  giver  of 
the  victory  over  disorder,  as  the  one  power 
that  can  “ keep  our  hearts  and  thoughts,”* 
we  may  associate  the  contribution  of  the 
historical  Jesus  and  the  permanent  Christ  to 
sanity  in  the  common  business  of  life,  to  the 
quiet  mind,  to  sense  in  religion.  Here  is  a 
religion  that  is  not  trance  or  ecstasy,  nor 
ritual  and  ceremony,  neither  delirium  nor 
Spw/xeva,  “ but  righteousness  and  peace  and 
joy  in  the  Holy  Spirit”;  and  this  works  out 
in  the  most  ordinary  affairs  of  human  inter- 

* Perhaps  it  is  worth  while  to  note  that,  Phil.  iv.  7,  St. 
Paul  wrote  “ thoughts,”  and  a little  study  of  his  experience 
pf  thoughts  and  their  movements  may  explain  what  he  meant. 


176  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


course.  Neither  George  Fox  nor  John  Wesley 
started  with  any  idea  of  an  immense  develop- 
ment of  English  industry  and  commerce,  as 
the  result  of  his  work — very  far  from  it.  They 
thought  of  eternal  life.  How,  then,  have  the 
societies  they  founded  done  so  much  in 
English  trade?  When  one  reflects  upon  the 
material  on  which  Wesley,  at  any  rate,  had 
to  work,  the  wonder  grows.  It  is  evident 
that  conversion  meant  in  hundreds  of  cases 
what  it  means  still — a clearing  of  brain,  and 
a disentangling  of  faculty,  which,  quite  apart 
from  spiritual  things  (if  one  may  use  so 
careless  a phrase),  involve  an  extraordinarily 
heightened  effectiveness  in  the  mundane 
affairs  of  buying  and  selling,  making  and 
planting,  guiding  and  directing. 

Have  we  studied  enough  the  place  of 
prayer  in  the  ordering  of  life  and  in  the 
development  of  character?  What  does  its 
perpetual  reference  of  everything  to  the  will 
of  Christ  mean  in  self-criticism  and  self- 
correction? Do  we  realise  enough  what 
Christian  people  have  gained  in  every  way 
from  this  constant  reminder  of  the  love  of 
Jesus,  of  His  life  and  death,  and  the  associa- 


PRAYER  AND  PAIN 


177 


tion  of  the  soul  with  its  Saviour?  There  are 
those  who  call  all  this  delusion,  auto- 
suggestion, and  the  like.  We  may  ask  if 
any  other  delusion,  any  other  variety  of  auto- 
suggestion, has  done  so  much  in  making  solid 
character,  sane,  healthy,  normal,  and  effec- 
tive? Can  we  persuade  ourselves  that  in  a 
rational  universe  delusion  does  better  than 
truth?  Prayer,  we  must  remember,  for  the 
Christian  is  nothing  without  Jesus  Christ.  It 
is  worth  while  to  weigh  the  effect  of  the  love 
of  Jesus  in  this  direction  also. 

With  this  we  may  connect  the  new  attitude 
to  pain.  Jesus  Himself,  we  read,  deliberately 
associated  Himself,  His  claims,  and  His 
nature,  with  suffering.  That  fact  the  Church 
could  not  forget,  nor  would  its  critics  allow 
it  to  forget  it.  He  was  “ crucified  in  weak- 
ness,” and  it  was  remarked  that  He  refused 
the  anesthetic  draught.  And  a part  of  the 
Christian  life,  for  Paul,  at  least,  was  identifica- 
tion with  Christ  on  this  side  of  His  ex- 
perience— ‘‘  the  fellowship  of  His  sufferings.” 
‘‘  With  Stupidity  and  sound  Digestion  man 
may  front  much,”  wrote  Carlyle  in  Sartor, 
but  these  are  not  the  endowments  with  which 

I? 


178  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


the  Christian  faces  pain — he  is  sensitive  to 
it,  and  must  be,  if  he  is  to  do  his  work  in 
the  world.  How  else  can  he  have  sympathy 
with  people  whose  first  need  it  is?  What, 
then,  has  it  meant  to  men  to  realise  the 
first-hand  knowledge  of  pain  that  Jesus  Christ 
had,  pain  of  body  and  mind  and  heart — ^to 
know  that  He  understands  what  He  is  to 
heal  ? 

I have  been  told  by  a missionary  from 
India  that  once,  ill  with  fever,  she  lay  groan- 
ing, and,  I suppose,  scarcely  knowing  what 
she  said  or  why,  she  kept  repeating  “Ah I 
me!  ah!  me!”  Her  ayah  overheard  her 
and,  mistaking  the  syllables,  said:  “Yes, 
Memsahib,  that  is  it ; Amen ! Amen ! ” and 
the  white  woman  learned  anew  the  lesson  she 
had  come  to  teach.  This  is  the  effect  of  the 
love  of  Jesus  in  making  men  and  women 
willing  to  bear  pain  as  long  as  He  chooses 
they  shall,  in  the  faith  that  what  His  love 
assigns  or  tolerates  is  not  very  much  amiss. 
It,  too,  must  have  contributed  more  to  man- 
kind than  we  remember.  Think  of  Bunyan’s 
contentment  to  be  in  prison,  “ God  . . . 
satisfying  of  me  that  it  was  His  will  and  mind 


THE  LIFE  OF  JOY 


179 


that  I should  be  there,”  and  his  resolve  after 
twelve  years  of  it  to  continue  there  on  the 
same  terms  “ till  the  moss  shall  grow  on 
mine  eyebrows.” 

On  this  follows  naturally  the  new  life  of 
joy  that  we  find  in  the  Christian  Church — the 
new  song,  as  it  is  called  in  the  Apocalypse. 
” A musical  thought,”  says  Carlyle,*  “ is  one 
spoken  by  a mind  that  has  penetrated  into 
the  inmost  heart  of  the  thing;  detected  the 
inmost  mystery  of  it,  namely  the  melody  that 
lies  hidden  in  it ; the  inward  harmony  of 
coherence  which  is  its  soul,  whereby  it  exists, 
and  has  a right  to  be,  here  in  this  world.  All 
inmost  things,  we  may  say,  are  melodious; 
naturally  utter  themselves  in  Song.  . . . All 
deep  things  are  Song.  It  seems  somehow  the 
very  central  essence  of  us.  Song;  . . . See 
deep  enough,  and  you  see  musically;  the 
heart  of  Nature  being  everywhere  music,  if 
you  can  only  reach  it.” 

The  early  Christian  did  reach  it.  The  Holy 
Spirit,  said  Hennas,  is  a glad  spirit.f  Synesius 


• Heroes  and  Hero  Worship,  Lecture  III. 
t Shepherd  of  Hermas,  Mandates,  10,  gi- 


i8o 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


was  told  the  same  by  old  men  when  he  was 
depressed  at  becoming  a bishop,  and  they  also 
told  him  that  the  Holy  Spirit  gladdens  His 
partakers.*  Augustine  found  the  Church 
glad;  and  so  it  goes  on  through  the  ages.f 
The  hymn-book  is  a volume  of  Christian 
evidences — the  product  of  generations  of 
thinking  and  living.  Thought  and  feeling, 
inherited  experience  and  individual  experi- 
ment, all  go  to  the  making  of  a great  hymn. 
We  do  not  give  enough  attention  to  what 
lies  behind,  and  lies  in,  our  hymn-books. 
How  much  man — so  to  speak — must  there  be 
in  a hymn,  or  any  poem,  if  it  is  to  last 
a generation,  and  many  generations,  and  still 
express  the  deepest  thought  and  experience  of 
God  that  men  know?  How  much  of  life  is 
there  in  Jesu  dulcis  memoria?  It  has  to  be 
remembered,  too,  that  the  hymn-book  is  in 
the  main  a Christian  product.  Cleanthes 
wrote  a sort  of  hymn  to  Zeus  or  Fate;  but 
nobody  sang  it.  The  Christian  hymn  implies 
the  congregation — ^an  entire  community  shar- 

* Synesius,  Ep.  57,  p.  1389,  Mig-ne. 

t Cf.  Clement  of  Alexandria,  Paed.,  i.,  22  ; The  Church 
fhe  one  body  that  remains  rejoicing  always  and  for  ever. 


THE  HYMN 


i8i 


ing  the  same  happiness;  and  Jesus  Christ  is 
the  “inmost  thing”  whence  it  all  comes. 

Thus,  the  biographer  of  Francis  of  Assisi 
writes : “ Drunken  with  the  love  and  com- 
passion of  Christ,  the  blessed  Francis  did 
at  times  make  such  songs,  for  the  passing 
sweet  melody  of  the  spirit  within  him,  seething 
over  outwardly  did  oftentimes  find  utterance 
in  the  French  tongue,  and  the  strain  of 
the  divine  whisper  that  his  ear  had  caught 
would  break  forth  into  a French  song  of 
joyous  exulting.  At  times  he  would  pick  up 
a stick  from  the  ground,  and  setting  it  upon 
his  left  shoulder,  would  draw  another  stick 
after  the  manner  of  a bow  with  his  right  hand 
athwart  the  same,  as  athwart  a viol  or  other 
instrument,  and,  making  befitting  gestures, 
would  sing  in  French  to  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.”*  Poetry,  as  Wordsworth  put  it,  is 
“ the  spontaneous  overflow  of  powerful  feel- 
ings.”f 

I take  one  illustration  only — a hymn  made 
by  the  first  English  hymn-writer,  the  mystic 

* speculum  Perfectionis,  cap.  xciii.  The  Mirror  of  Perfection, 
tr.  Sebastian  Evans,  p.  165. 

t Preface  to  Lyrical  Ballads,  1800. 


i82 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


Richard  Rolle  of  Hampole  (?  1290-1349), 
a precursor  in  some  ways  of  the  Reformation, 
e.g.,  in  his  emphasis  on  the  love  of  Christ. 
He  marks  three  stages  in  his  course,  which 
he  calls  calor,  canor,  and  dale  or ; and  the 
singing  came  to  him  by  surprise,  and  after 
that  his  experience  is  what  he  says  quite 
simply : T otiens  glorior,  quotiens  nominis  tui, 
Jesu,  recordor.  His  theory  of  the  religious 
life  is  in  amore  Dei  cane  re  et  jubilare  quasi 
raptus  super  terrena,  in  se  deficere  et  in  Deum 
pergere.  Here  are  a few  of  his  verses  :* 

I sytt  & syng  of  lufe-Iangyng  fat  in  my  hert  es  bred  : 
Ihesu  my  keyng  & my  joyng,  whyne*  war  I to  fe  led  ? 
Ful  wele  1 wate  in  al  my  state,  in  joy  I sulde  be  fed  : 
Ihesu  me  bryng  til  fy  wonyng,*  for  blode  fat  fou  base 
sched. 

Demed  he  was  to  hyng,’  fe  faire  aungels  fode  : 

Ful  sare  fai  gan  hym  swyng,'*  when  fat  he  bunden^ 
stode, 

His  bak  was  in  betyng,  & spylt  hys  blissed  blode, 
pe  thorn  corond  fe  keyng,  fat  nayled  was  on  fe  rode.* 


* The  Latin  sentences  will  be  found  in  Horstman’s  edition 
of  Rolle,  vol.  ii.,  Introduction,  p.  xiv.  The  verses  are  in 
vol.  i.,  p.  76. 

' Why  not  ? * Dwelling.  ^ Hang.  * Beat.  ‘ Bound.  * Cross. 


RICHARD  ROLLE 


183 

Whyte  was  his  naked  breste,  & rede  his  blody  syde, 
Wan  was  his  faire  face,  his  woundes  depe  & wyde; 
pe  iew})is'  wald  not  wande  to  pyne®  hym  in  }>at  tyde  : 
Als  streme  dose  of  pe  strande,  his  blode  gan  downe 
glyde. 

Blynded  was  his  faire  ene,  his  flesch  blody  for-bette; 
His  lufsum  iyf  was  layde  ful  low  & saryful  vmbesette. 
Dede®  & lyf  began  to  stryf  wheper  myght  maystre 
mare, 

When  aungels  brede  was  dampned  to  dede®  to  safe 
oure  sauls  sare. 

Lyf  was  slayne  & rase  agayne,  in  faire-hede'*  may  we 
fare  ; 

And  dede*  es  broght  til  litel  or  noght,  & hasten  in 
endless  kare. 

On  hym  pat  pe  boght  hafe  al  pi  thoght,  & lede  pe  in 
his  lare“  ; 

Gyf  al  pi  hert  til  Crist  pi  qwert,'“  & lufe  hym  ever-mare. 

If  Art  is  the  offspring  of  Joy,  we  have 
also  to  remember  Charles  Lamb’s  emphasis 
on  the  sanity  of  true  genius.  When,  then,  we 
find  in  the  Christian  life  the  combination  of 
the  deepest  and  intensest  joy  with  sanity  and 
self-discipline,  we  have  surely  favourable  con- 
ditions for  great  Art.  While  Christ’s  teaching 


^Jews.  “Torment.  ® Death.  ‘“Beauty.  “Learning.  **Joy. 


184  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


seemed  to  some  to  suggest  that  all  things 
temporal  are  vain,  to  others  it  was  as  clear 
that  the  historical  Jesus  did  not  live  in 
a vain  show  — rather  in  a beautiful  world, 
the  work  of  His  Father.  Historically,  in 
Christ  Art  found  itself  again,  and  pro- 
duced great  works  of  deeper  significance. 
The  new  value  of  life  and  of  man  was 
bound  to  tell.  This  is  one  way  in 
which  the  joy  associated  with  the  belief  in 
Jesus  Christ  has  affected  mankind.  It  is  a 
large  subject,  and  it  would  take  us  too  far 
and  too  wide  in  historical  research  to  pursue 
it;  for  the  moment  all  we  can  do  is  to  note 
that  the  debt  of  Art  to  the  Gospel  is  far 
larger  than  people  of  the  artistic  temperament 
sometimes  recognise.  Their  quarrel  is  with 
its  control — and  control  is  yet  the  one  thing 
needful  for  such  temperaments,  if  they  are  to 
achieve  Art.  ; 

Two  points  only  I wish  to  suggest  while 
we  are  dealing  with  Joy.  Most  of  us  miss 
a good  deal  of  its  value,  because  we  contuse 
it  with  more  fugitive  emotions,  and  come  to 
look  on  it  as  a mere  idle  flash,  like  summer 
lightning  that  illumines  nothing.  That  is 


“ THE  DEEP  POWER  OF  JOY  ” 185 

superficial  criticism,  as  Wordsworth  would  tell 
us : 

With  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 
Of  harmony,  and  the  deep  power  of  joy. 

We  see  into  the  life  of  things. 

A great  poet  is  apt  tO'  be  more  of  a 
psychologist  than  we  suppose,  and  a saying 
like  this,  taken  with  Wordsworth’s  descrip- 
tion of  the  poet  as  one  “who  looks  at  the 
world  in  the  spirit  of  love,’’*  should  lead  us 
to  a truer  estimate  of  Joy  and  its  significance. 
With  this  in  our  minds  we  shall  be  less 
disposed  to  undervalue  Joy  as  an  index  to 
fundamental  Truth;  and  when  we  realise  the 
perennial  joy  that  keeps  breaking  out  in  the 
Christian  community,  with  its  “deep  power’’ 
of  insight,  work,  and  endurance,  we  shall  be 
better  able  to  measure  the  meaning  of  the 
love  of  Jesus. 

For,  in  the  next  place,  the  joy  that  springs 
from  love,  like  love  itself,  points  to  a personal 
centre.  If  Wordsworth’s  love  of  Nature  and 
joy  in  Nature  ,seem  to  suggest  that  this  is 
wrong,  the  reply  is  that  for  Wordsworth 


Preface  to  Lyrical  Ballads,  1800. 


i86 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


neither  was  Nature  impersonal,  nor  were 
animals,  or  even  flowers  and  plants,  incapable 
of  personal  feelings.*  It  is  the  abstract  noun 
that  is  the  most  hopeless  of  all  things,  barren 
of  comfort  and  barren  of  power.  That  sort 
of  mistake  the  Christian  Church  has  gener- 
ally managed  to  avoid,  and  the  reason  lies 
in  the  fact  that  the  very  source  of  everything 
was  for  the  Church  a historic  personality. 
There  have  always  been  people  for  whom  an 
abstract  proposition  is  invariably  more  con- 
vincing than  a fact;  but  most  of  us  walk 
better  with  at  least  one  foot  at  a time  on 
earth.  It  has  been  the  salvation  of  the  Church 
that  Jesus  was  a person,  and  not  a doctrine.  No 
one,  as  Dr.  Rendel  Harris  once  put  it,  can  sing 
How  sweet  the  name  of  Logos  sounds  I 
On  the  contrary,  Giacopone  dei  Todi,  the 
friend  of  St.  Francis,  comes  far  nearer  the 
real  thing  in  his  hymn  on  the  Nativity  :f 
Fac  me  vere  congaudere 
Jesulino  cohaerere 
Donee  ego  vixero. 

Our  last  point  in  this  long  lecture  shall 


* See  Lines  written  in  Early  Spring,  1798. 
t Cf,  Sabatier,  Life  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  p.  286. 


CHRISTIAN  HOPE  187 


be  to  remind  ourselves  of  the  place  of  Hope 
in  Christian  experience: 

Hope,  the  paramount  duty  that  Heaven  lays, 

For  its  own  honour,  on  man’s  suffering  heart. 

Hope  is  not  an  easy  virtue.  There  is  death 
to  grapple  with — and  all  men’s  theories  of 
death' — 'extinction  and  the  transmigration  of 
souls,  “ eternal  re-dying  ” as  it  has  been  called. 
Life,  when  one  is  young  and  forgets  age  and 
death,  is  a gay  thing  for  the  pagan ; but  every 
pagan  litany  ends  in  a shriek  of  terror,  or 
the  grim,  set  teeth  and  hard  mouth  of  despair. 
From  the  first,  however,  it  has  been  noticed 
that  the  inscriptions  on  Christian  graves  in  the 
catacombs  and  elsewhere  have  a different  note 
from  those  the  pagan  carved.*  The  belief 


* Cf.  Marucchi,  Christian  Epigraphy  (Eng.  tr.),  No.  34 : 


IN  NOMINE 
QVIESCIT 


and  No.  84,  a curious  combination  of  Greek  and  Latin  ; 


an 

anchor 


AHMHTPIC  ET  AEONTIA 
CEIPIKE  • 4>EIAIE  • BENEMEREN 
TI  • MNHCQHC  • IHCOTC 
O • KYPIOC  • TEKNON  . . . 


a 

dove 


i88 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


in  immortality  rested  on  Jesus  Christ,  and 
there  it  still  rests — a faith  that  finds  help  in 
several  suggestions  of  value,  but  in  the  long 
run  rests  on  Him.*  Men  who  believe  in 
Him  will  take  the  risk  of  there  being  no 
eternal  life ; in  any  case  they  do  not  care  much 
about  it  apart  from  Him. 

The  Christian  martyr  deserves  mbre 
sympathetic  study  than  he  has  had.  There 
were  foolish  and  noisy  martyrs,  but  their  talk 
need  not  obscure  for  us  their  action.  Still, 
in  the  main,  the  martyrs  were  quiet  and  com- 
posed. “ Miserablest  mortals,”  writes  Carlyle 
when  he  reaches  Louis  XVI.  on  the  scaffold, 
” doomed  for  picking  pockets,  have  a whole 
five-act  Tragedy  in  them,  in  that  dumb  pain, 
as  they  go  to  the  gallows,  unregarded;  they 
consume  the  cup  of  trembling  down  to  the 
lees.  For  Kings  and  for  Beggars,  for  the 
justly  doomed  and  the  unjustly,  it  is  a hard 
thing  to  die.”  Yet,  with  a full  sense  of  pain 
and  shame  and  popular  execration,  utterly 
unhelped  by  human  sympathy,  men  and 

* C/.  Herrmann,  Communion  with  God,  p.  290  (Eng.  tr.)  : 
“ We  cannot  think  of  the  personal  life  of  Jesus  as  some- 
thing that  could  ever  be  given  over  to  annihilation.” 


THE  CHRISTIAN  MARTYR 


189 


women  faced  death,  quite  gladly,  and  quietly.* 
It  is  easy  to  say;  “Yes,  they  looked  beyond, 
and  did  it  for  eternal  rewards.”  Eternal 
rewards  look  poor  on  the  other  side  of  the 
vivicomburium,  the  stake  and  the  faggots. 
The  motive,  however,  was  not  the  thought 
of  what  Jesus  Christ  would  do  for  them,  but 
a great  consciousness  of  what  He  had  done, 
of  what  He  was — sheer  gratitude  and  love.f 
The  same  sure  hope  shows  itself  in  work 
and  service.  Marcus  Aurelius’  famous  Diary 
is  surely  the  most  desperately  hopeless  book 
ever  written.  Omar  and  Ecclesiastes  have  a 
clear  enjoyment  of  their  literary  work; 
Marcus  had  as  little  joy  or  hope  as  ever  man 
had  who  got  through  a life  of  work  without 
hanging  himself.  But  the  Christian  did  not 
work  without  hope.  “ Christ  lives,”  wrote 


♦Clement  of  Alexandria  (Strom.,  ii.,  125)  quotes  Zeno’s 
saying,  that  the  sight  of  one  Hindu  enduring  the  flame  was 
better  than  all  the  declamations  about  pain,  and  he  points, 
not  unjustly,  to  “ the  boundless  fountains  of  martyrs  daily 
before  our  eyes,  being  burnt,  impaled,  and  beheaded.”  On 
martyrdom,  perhaps  the  best  things  to  read  are  Tertullian’s 
Scorpiace  and  On  Flight  in  Persecution. 

t See  on  this  Clement  of  Alexandria,  Strom.,  iv.,  14,  on 
love  to  the  Lord  as  the  motive  in  martyrdom, 


190 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


Luther,  “and  does  not  sit  at  the  Emperor’s 
but  at  God’s  right  hand,  else  we  should  have 
been  lost  long  ago.’’*  The  vision  of  the 
triumphant  Christ  may  seem  to  some  a fancy; 
yet  what  it  has  meant  in  constraining  power 
and  in  resultant  victory  it  is  not  easy  to  com- 
pute. It  is  the  men  who  have  believed  in 
the  eventual  supremacy  of  Christ  who  have 
won  Him  what  supremacy  He  yet  has,  though 
they  themselves — justly  enough' — would  say 
that  it  was  He  who  did  it  through  them.  The 
great  note  of  Christian  song  is  given  in  the 
Apocalypse : “ Thou  wast  slain  and  Thou  hast 
redeemed  us.  ...  To  the  Lamb  be  blessing 
and  honour  and  glory  and  power  for  ever 
and  ever.’’ 

Throughout  this  lecture  I have  tried  to  set 
out  side  by  side  what  has  been  actually 
achieved  by  the  Christian  Church  and  in  the 
Christian  man,  and  what  the  Church — the 
community  at  large  and  the  individual  in 
particular — has  said  to  explain  how  such 
things  were  achieved.  My  task  has  been 
history  rather  than  philosophy;  and  if  the 


* Letter  of  9 July,  1530,  to  Justus  Jonas, 


THE  FACT  AND  ITS  MEANING  19 1 


Church’s  language  has  been  dreadfully  un- 
philosophic  in  the  judgment  of  some  people, 
still,  it  is  the  historian’s  business  to  remember 
Othello’s  bidding: 

Speak  of  me  as  I am;  nothing  extenuate, 

Nor  set  down  aught  in  malice. 

We  shall  not  understand  Church  or  saint, 
republic  or  trust  company,  poet  or  warrior, 
on  the  basis  of  a revised  version  toned  down 
to  suit  a priori  judgments.  We  must  have  the 
actual — word  and  deed,  however  foolish ; and 
we  must  remember — ^especially  the  historian 
must  remember — that  word  and  deed  are 
nothing  till  they  glow  with  the  light  of  the 
whole  personality  behind  them.  This  and 
that  the  Church  has  done;  this  and  that, 
one  Christian  saint  or  another;  and  we  know 
it.  Nothing  in  this  lecture  is  unfamiliar  01 
out  of  the  way.  It  is  all  as  common  as  can 
be ; not  a street-corner  crowd  with  a Salva- 
tionist officer  in  its  centre,  but  the  story  of 
the  Church  in  the  centuries  is  there.  My 
task  is  to  remind  you  of  what  you  know,  and 
to  ask  if  we  understand  it  in  all  its  wonder  and 
significance.  Not  till  then  can  our  opinion 


192 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


be  final.  It  is  a story  of  power.  The  language 
of  the  Church  and  its  explanations  may  be 
all  wrong;  but  it  represents  a real  force.  If 
there  is  better  language  to  express  that  force, 
let  us  have  it  by  all  means  ;*  but  if  the  better 
language  leaves  out,  as  sometimes  happens 
when  tales  are  improved,  the  gist  of  the  whole 
Story — then  the  old  language  will  be  nearer 
the  fact.  The  Christian  Church  has  tried 
again  and  again  to  express  what  most  it  means 
in  other  language,  but  it  has  not  succeeded; 
it  can  find  no  other  account  of  love  and  power 
than  that  they  are  bound  up  with  Jesus  Christ. 


* Supposing  the  better  language  found,  the  first  experi- 
ment might  be  to  substitute  it  for  the  familiar  expressions  of 
the  New  Testament,  and  to  see  how  the  book  read  when 
Jesus  had  been  eliminated  in  favour  of  the  more  accurate 
expressiop, 


LECTURE  VI 
The  Criticism  of  Jesus 

SO  far  in  the  course,  of  which  this  is  the 
last  lecture,  our  aim  has  been  to  dis- 
cover along  what  lines  we  may  reach 
the  actual  experience  of  the  Christian  Church 
— setting  fact,  in  the  first  place,  before  theory, 
in  the  endeavour  to  understand  what  the 
Church  means  before  we  pronounce  upon  it. 
From  the  start  we  have  realised  that 
experience  is  hard  to  grasp  in  its  fulness  in 
any  case,  and  is  only  to  be  known  by  such 
an  identification  as  will  let  the  original 
factors  act  upon  the  mind  again,  and,  as  far 
as  possible,  in  the  original  way.  Point  by 
point,  in  our  study  of  the  Church  and  its 
experience,  we  have  been  brought  back  to 
Jesus  Christ,  for  at  each  step  we  found 
the  Christian  community  at  one  in  the  con- 
viction that  everything  depends  upon  Christ. 
In  every  phase  of  its  life  the  one  thing  that 
decisively  differentiates  its  experience  from 


194 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


that  of  the  world  around  is  its  relation  to  Him. 
He  is  the  historical  source  of  the  whole  move- 
ment; He  is  the  moving  factor  still; — such, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  is  the  fixed  belief  of  the 
Christian  Church,  after  a great  deal  of  experi- 
ment, both  in  trying  to  minimise  the  place 
He  must  hold,  and  in  trying  to  avail  itself  of 
what  it  calls  “ the  unsearchable  riches  of 
Christ.”  Throughout,  a tacit  challenge  is 
offered  to  the  critic : “ Do  you  understand 
Him?  Do  you  see  what  it  is  that  drives 
the  Church  back  on  to  Him  in  every  age  and 
in  every  situation  ? ” Great  as  the  part  has 
been  which  the  Christian  communities  have 
played  in  human  history,  the  whole,  according 
to  the  Christian,  is,  after  all,  a mere  phase  of 
the  activity  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  statement 
may  sound  preposterous  or  paradoxical,  but 
for  the  moment  it  does  not  concern  us  to 
pronounce  judgment  upon  it.  Our  business 
— ^as  we  have  agreed  so  often — is  to  realise 
before  we  judge;  and,  however  odd  the  funda- 
mental conviction  of  others  may  sound  to  us, 
we  have  to  see  for  ourselves  what  they  really 
mean,  and  what  they  are  trying  to  express — 
not  least  when  this  conviction  is  strongly  held 


THE  JUDGMENT  UPON  CHRIST  195 


by  a community  the  thoughts  and  lives  of 
whose  members  have  so  profoundly  affected 
human  history. 

This  lecture  will  be  devoted  to  the  con- 
sideration of  some  methods  of  approach  to 
the  pivotal  question  in  every  study  of  the 
Christian  movement — viz.,  the  personality 
which  is  its  centre.  N o man,  however  possessed 
of  truth  himself,  can  make  up  the  mind  of 
another;  Jesus  Himself  never  attempted  to 
do  that  for  anyone;  but  it  is  possible  to  put 
evidence  before  men,  or,  better  still,  to  suggest 
ways  in  which  they  may  apprehend  it  for 
themselves  by  personal  adventure. 

Why  must  we  undertake  to  form  any 
judgment  upon  Jesus  Christ?  Why  is  it  im- 
possible to  let  Him  alone  ? In  the  first  place, 
because  we  are  confronted  by  the  historical 
Christian  Church,  and  cannot  get  away  from 
it,  however  much  some  of  us  may  wish  to  be 
rid  of  it.  The  Christian  Church  is  there; 
the  whole  of  Christian  history  is  there,  with 
all  the  endless  ramifications  of  influence  it 
has  exerted  upon  mankind.  To  refuse  to 
consider  such  matters  is  to  cut  ourselves  off 
from  humanity  and  its  experience,  to  count 


196  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


too  much  of  it  alien  to  us.  It  is  only 
possible  to  be  human  as  one  is  open  in  heart 
and  mind  to  the  life  of  all  men;  and  to  be 
closed  to  what  has  meant  so  much  is  to  be 
half-men  at  best,  to  lack  that  sympathy  and 
intelligence  for  others  which  makes  us  men, 
and  by  which  alone  we  can  hope  to  grow. 
We  cannot  by  our  own  choice  cut  ourselves 
off  from  the  deepest  force  mankind  has 
known — a factor  as  powerful  in  the  present 
as  in  the  past — and  keep  our  manhood 
undiminished. 

There  the  Christian  Church  stands,  and  in 
the  centre  of  all  things  for  it  is  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  There  are  those  who  make  des- 
perate efforts  to  disprove  His  historicity,  to 
convince  themselves  that  He  never  existed. 
Such  endeavours  are  quite  intelligible ; if  the 
Christian  Church  has  to  be  got  rid  of,  Jesus, 
the  historical  Jesus,  must  go  first ; and  every 
attempt  made  to  torture  historical  evidence 
to  suggest  that  He  never  taught  and  never  was 
crucified  at  all,  is  a recognition  that  for  the 
Church  all  depends  on  Him. 

A religion,  it  is  sometimes  urged,  is  the 
weaker  for  having  an  historical  figure  as  its 


THE  HISTORICAL  BASIS 


197 


centre  and  resting  on  an  historical  basis ; and 
Christianity,  accordingly,  is  doomed  to  share 
the  fortunes  of  the  historical  Jesus.  Thus 
the  Swami  Vivekananda,  the  great  leader  of 
the  Vedantic  movement  in  modern  India,* 
urges  that  Hinduism  alone  can  be  the 
universal  religion  for  mankind,  for  “all  the 
other  religions  have  been  built  round  the  life 
of  what  they  think  an  historical  man,  and 
what  they  think  their  strength  is  really  their 
weakness,  for  smash  the  historicality  of  the 
man  and  the  whole  building  tumbles  to  the 
ground.  Half  the  lives,”  he  continues,  “of 
these  great  centres  of  religion  have  been 
broken  into  pieces,  and  the  other  half  are 
doubted  very  seriously.  As  such,  every  truth 
that  has  its  sanction  only  in  their  words 
vanishes  into  air  again.”  We  need  not  discuss 
the  Swami’s  principles,  which  bear  the  usual 
marks  of  quick  thinking,  but  we  may  accept 
one  of  his  sentences  and  apply  it  to  Jesus 
Christ,  for  whom  he  no  doubt  designed  it : 
“ Smash  the  historicality  of  the  man  and  the 
whole  building  tumbles  to  the  ground.” 

* See  C.  F.  Andrews,  The  Renaissance  in  India,  pp.  128-132, 
158-159 ; Meredith  Townsend,  Asia  and  Europe,  pp.  252-260. 


198  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


Whether  a religion  needs  a historical  basis, 
or  is  better  without  one,  is  another  issue,  and 
is  at  best  a rather  abstract  question.  The 
main  issue  here  for  us  is  the  historicity  of 
Jesus.  If  the  ordinary  canons  of  history,  used 
in  every  other  case,  hold  good  in  this  case, 
Jesus  is  undoubtedly  an  historical  person.  If 
He  is  not  an  historical  person,  the  only 
alternative  is  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
history  at  all — it  is  delirium,  nothing  else; 
and  a rational  being  would  be  better  em- 
ployed in  the  collection  of  snuff-boxes.  And  if 
history  is  impossible,  so  is  all  other  knowledge. 

Another  line,  however,  is  suggested,  which 
has  the  merit  of  sense,  and  has,  moreover, 
such  support  as  some  supposed  historical 
parallels  will  give.  Jesus,  it  is  conceded,  is, 
of  course,  historical,  as  Zoroaster,  Buddha, 
Socrates,  and  Muhammad  are  historical. 
Each  of  these  four  gave  mankind  a great 
impulse,  and  so  did  Jesus;  and  neither  in 
their  case  nor  in  His  does  the  value  of  the 
religion  rest  on  the  person  of  the  teacher. 
The  suggestion  is  attractive,  but  one  or  two 
things  diminish  its  importance.  In  neither 
of  the  four  parallel  cases  can  it  be  said,  as 


THE  FOUNDERS  OF  RELIGION  199 


in  the  case  of  Jesus,  that  the  influence  of  the 
teacher  as  a personality  has  not  declined  as 
the  generations  have  separated  men  from  him. 
The  schools  of  Socrates  and  of  Zoroaster  are 
practically  'extinct — apart  from  two  interest- 
ing but  small  communities  of  Zoroastrians 
in  Yazd  and  Bombay.*  Buddha’s  religion 
or  philosophy  is  not,  in  the  form  in  which  he 
taught  it,  a faith  that  greatly  moves  the  masses 
of  mankind.  The  religion  of  Islam  bears  on 
it,  indeed,  the  impress  of  Muhammad’s  per- 
sonality— a fatal  inheritance,  which  keeps  men 
in  a backwater  wherever  the  religion  of  the 
Quran  really  prevails.  On  the  other  hand, 
no  one  can  say  that  since  the  Reformation  the 
Christian  nations  have  been  retarding  the 
world’s  progress.  We  may  lament  that  they 
have  had  so  many  wars  and  been  guilty  of 
so  much  wrong  dohe  against  primitive 
peoples,  but  we  must  recognise  that  these 
defects  they  share  with  all  mankind,  while  the 
progress  is  their  own.  There  is  something 
about  Christianity,  candid  students  of  human 
affairs  will  admit,  that  is  of  value.  What  is  it  ? 

* On  the  Zoroastrians  of  Yazd,  see  E.  G.  Browne’s  delight- 
ful Year  among  the  Persians,  chapters  xiii.  and  xiv. 


200 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


What  is  the  real  value  of  Christianity? 
There  are  those  who  say  at  once:  “Not  its 
theology.”  That,  they  urge,  stands  very  much 
on  a level  with  similar  constructions,  as 
fanciful  and  as  unproven,  which  other  re- 
ligions can  show;  there  is  little  choice  in 
Folklore,  they  tell  us.  But  the  ethics  of 
Christianity  are  sounder.  Christians  may  not 
actually  manage  to  “ love  their  neighbours 
as  themselves,” — indeed,  some  clever  people 
say  it  is  better  they  should  not  quite  succeed 
at  it — but  their  average  decent  grasp  of  the 
ideas  of  altruism  and  social  service  is  a good 
thing  for  society,  and  it  would  be  a pity  if  it 
were  lost.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  sometimes 
urged  against  the  Gospel  that  it  is  essentially 
in  its  ethics  that  it  fails;  that  it  teaches  men 
submission  and  contentment,  to  turn  the  other 
cheek  and  to  bear  with  oppression,  confiscated 
cloaks  and  commandeered  miles;  that  it  is, 
in  reality,  by  pow,  essentially  an  engine  of 
middle-class  industrial  tyranny.* 


* Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  for  instance,  says : “ Christianity,  in 
making  a merit  of  such  submission,  has  marked  only  that 
depth  in  the  abyss  at  which  the  very  sense  of  shame  is  lost  ” 
— and  so  on.  History  is  against  him,  if  that  counts. 


THE  REAL  VALUE 


201 


Whatever  has  to  be  said  of  Jesus,  no  one 
can  read  the  Gospels  with  any  intelligence 
and  suggest  that  He  was  the  emissary  of  any 
government  or  middle  class,  inculcating  ideas 
to  secure  their  predominance.  However  much 
may  be  uncertain,  it  is  certain  that  He  was 
an  original  man  — earnest,  quick,  clear- 
sighted, and  fearless,  no  man’s  agent.  If 
oligarchies  and  despotisms  have  used  the 
Church  that  bears  His  name,  and  applied 
parts  of  His  teaching  to  their  own  ends,  they 
have  had  as  often  reason  to  regret  it  when 
men  caught  His  mind  and  studied  His 
thoughts  un-garbled.  His  teaching.  He  would 
have  said,  was  never  meant  for  second-hand 
use.  He,  at  all  events,  never  aimed  at  being 
a captain  of  echoes.  It  is  not  real  criticism  to 
judge  Him  by  echoes,  nor  by  organisations 
that  have  lived  on  echoes. 

We  turn,  then,  to  His  teaching — to  that 
“ sublime  ethic  ” in  which  we  are  told  to  look 
for  the  real  value — ^and  here  we  find  un- 
expected allies.  Modern  Jewish  students  of 
ancient  Judaism  tell  us  that  there  is  very  little 
that  is  original  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  as 
Christian  scholars  would  see  if  they  would 


202 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


take  the  trouble  to  go  to  the  original 
documents  instead  of  lazily  depending  on  St. 
Paul  or  the  warped  narratives  of  the  Gospels.* 
Even  the  so-called  Golden  Rule  is  found  in  a 
negative  form  in  one  of  the  Jewish  fathers.f 
Jewish  morality,  it  is  said,  has  been  steadily 
written  down;  it  has  always  been  as  good  as 
Christian,  and  the  great  Jewish  moralists  have 


* For  a thorough  going  defence  of  Jew  and  Pharisee,  see 
Gerald  Friedlander,  The  Jewish  Sources  of  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  (London,  1911).  His  view  is  that  “the  career  of 
Jesus  as  prophet  and  Messiah  was  an  entire  failure”  (p.  6); 
“ the  Lord’s  prayer  is  merely  an  adaptation  of  nine  verses 
of  Ezekiel”  (p.  165);  “we  have  not  seen  any  good  reason 
to  prefer  the  teaching  of  Jesus  to  that  of  the  Old  Testament, 
and  of  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees”  (p.  45).  Mr.  Friedlander’s 
polemic  against  Mr.  Claude  Montefiore  is  significant.  A very 
different  view  of  Pharisaism  is  taken  by  another  Jewish 
scholar  of  the  same  name — Moriz  Friedlander — “brought 
up,”  as  with  real  feeling  he  says  in  self-defence,  “ in 
Pharisaism,  which  I learnt  to  know  from  its  noblest  and 
deepest  side,  which  I lived  up  to  manhood.” 

t It  is  interesting  to  find  the  same  kind  of  comment  in  Mr. 
Yoshio  Markino’s  book.  When  I was  a Child  (p.  93).  “ The 

latter  [the  New  Testament]  was  a great  disappointment  for 
me.  Of  course,  the  Sermon  on  the  Mountain  is  very  high 
ethic,  but  these  were  not  new  lessons  to  me.  Many  Oriental 
philosophers  have  talked  about  the  ethics  equal  to  that 
sermon  long,  long  ages  before.”  The  book  is  full  of  in- 
terest for  anyone  concerned  in  any  way  with  the  spreading 
of  Christianity  in  the  non-Christian  world. 


JEWISH  PARALLELS  203 

a parallel  for  everything  of  worth  in  Chris- 
tianity. 

To  this  reasoning  two  replies  have  recently 
been  made.  The  Jewish  scholar,  Moriz  Fried- 
lander,  frankly  takes  the  line  that  Jesus 
offered  the  Pharisees  something  higher  than 
they  knew,  and  that  they  made  a fatal  mistake 
in  refusing  it.*  Wellhausen’s  famous  reply 
takes  the  Jewish  attack  more  simply — “Yes, 
it  is  all  in  the  Talmud — and  how  much  else ! ” 
We  may,  however,  ask  a further  question. 
Is  it  only  because  there  is  inferior  matter  in 
the  Talmud  that  Christ  prevailed?  Is  the 
world  really  so  apt  to  be  moved  by  moral 
maxims  ? By  catchwords,  yes — men  in  groups 


* Moriz  Friedlander,  Die  Religiose  Bewegungen  innerhalb 
des  Judentums  im  Zeitalter  Jesu  (Berlin,  1905);  Synagoge 
und  Kirche  in  ihren  Anfange  (Berlin,  1908).  He  speaks 
of  Jesus  “ being  like  a meteor  streaming  in  light  across  the 
world,  whose  kindling  and  enlightening  rays  could  never 
again  be  extinguished  “ and  if  that  light  was  wei\ed{yerhullt) 
by  short-sighted  and  dark  Pharisees  and  worldly  priests,  it 
broke  out  and  still  breaks  out  ” {S.  u.  K.,  p.  151).  “ Jesus 

died  a heroic  champion  for  the  truth  and  for  the  people’s 
redemption.  He  died  because  he  tore  the  veil  from  the  face 
of  the  hypocritical  Pharisees — the  ‘ coloured,’  as  the  Talmud 
calls  them — and  showed  the  great  masses  their  true  nature  ” 
(S.  u.  K.,  p.  155).  “ For  this  work  of  man’s  redemption, 

Jesus  lived  and  offered  himself  up  ” (f?.  B.,  p.  339). 


204  THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 

and  communities  are  from  time  to  time  the  prey 
of  catchwords,  but  not  for  long,  as  Abraham 
Lincoln’s  well-quoted  saying  suggests.  But 
the  world  moved  by  maxims  ? 

Alas  1 the  great  world  goes  its  way  I 
It  never  did  and  it  never  would  consider  the 
Rabbis  or  their  maxims — 

Far  less  consider  them  again! 

Let  them  show  how  they  anticipated  Jesus 
in  every  moral  precept  He  gave — what  does  it 
matter?  Who  cares?  It  was  Jesus,  not  Hillel, 
that  conquered  the  ancient  world,  en  toytoi 
NIKA  was  never  thought  or  said  of  any  Jewish 
symbol.  If  Christianity  were  no  more  than 
a heap  of  precepts,  it  might  interest  men 
to-day  as  little  as  the  Talmud.  We  need  not 
invoke  the  evidence  of  Paul,  who  had  at  least 
as  good  a knowledge  of  first-century  Judaism 
as  most  of  us  have.  Our  Jewish  critics  have 
cleared  the  air  for  us,  and  helped  us  most 
materially.  If  the  sublime  ethic,  the  altruism, 
and  so  forth,  are  all  in  Judaism,  then  the  real 
value  is  somewhere  else.  As  Mr.  J.  M. 
Robertson  says : “ The  fundamental  source  of 
error  in  this  connection  is  the  assumption  that 
mere  moral  doctrine  can  possibly  regenerate 


THE  DIFFERENTIA 


205 


any  society  independently  of  a vital  change 
in  social  and  intellectual  conditions.”  We 
may  differ  as  to  how  this  vital  change  is 
to  be  produced,  but  the  sentence  as  it  stands 
is  sound.  It  is  a vital  change  that  is  needed, 
and  the  Christian  Church  has  always  known 
it  and  said  so.  The  differentia  between  the 
Christian  faith  and  all  other  religions  is  the 
personality  of  Jesus  Himself.  “When  one 
loses  Christ,”  said  Luther,  “all  faiths  (of  the 
Pope,  the  Jews,  the  Turks,  the  common 
rabble)  become  one  faith.”* 

We  haveicome  back  to  our  problem  again 
— the  formation  of  some  serious  judgment 
upon  Jesus  Christ  Himself.  Here  is  the  force 
that  historically  has  transformed  the  thoughts 
of  men,  their  standards,  and  their  life.  The 
old  world  to  which  He  came  has  become 
new;  the  Lamb  of  God  has  taken  away 
already  much  of  the  sin  of  the  world.  We 
have  to  study  how  He  has  done  it.  He  begins 
with  a group  of  a dozen  or  so  men,  living  in 
great  intimacy  with  Him;  and  I am  not  clear 
that  there  is  anything  in  all  Christian  history 
so  full  of  wonder  as  the  transformation  of 


• Quoted  by  Harnack,  History  of  Dogma,  vii.  199. 


2o6 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


these  men.*  Again  and  again  it  has  come 
to  me  with  surprise,  even  with  embarrassment 
— how  came  the  change  in  them  ? What  made 
it  ? Through  them  again  He  has  forced  Himself 
upon  the  world — quite  quietly.  The  tide  itself 
could  not  come  up  so  noiselessly.  The  world, 
itself,  in  an  oblique  way,  has  accepted  His 
canons — for  the  criticism  of  other  people.  It 
has  recognised  Him,  too,  as  its  chief  difficulty^ 
the  very  ground  and  foundation  of  the  Church 
of  which  it  is  so  weary.  He  stands  the 
permanent  life  of  that  Church,  which  has 
sacrificed  so  much  and  done  it  so  gladly  for 
Him,  and  which  only  lives,  it  assures  us,  in 
virtue  of  His  perpetual  presence. 

Here  we  touch  a theological  problem,  which 
I am  wishful  to  avoid  at  present.  We  have  to 
think  at  once  of  the  historical  Jesus  and  of 
the  permanent  Christ,  and  if  we  plunge  im- 
mediately into  the  vexed  question  of  their 
relations,  it  will  take  us  into  an  area  where 
it  may  not  as  yet  be  profitable  to  spend  our 
time.  For  this  is,  above  all,  a matter  that  is 
not  to  be  settled  on  a priori  grounds,  on  the 
basis  of  our  preconceptions.  It  was  precisely 


* See  p.  171. 


DECISION  AS  TO  CHRIST 


207 


to  avoid  this  that  throughout  this  course  we 
have  gone  to  history  first,  to  enlarge  our  range 
of  actual  facts  and  to  deepen  our  under- 
standing of  the  facts  we  already  have.  For 
the  facts  with  which  we  have  to  deal  are 
not  objective  dead  things — like  empty  shells 
among  pebbles  on  a beach — but  living  things, 
like  Luther’s  “truths  with  hands  and  feet’’; 
not  always  intelligible  at  the  first  glance,  but 
always  relevant. 

Bearing  in  mind  how  much  we  have  to 
learn  and  to  assimilate  before  we  are  ripe 
for  a judgment  upon  Jesus  Christ,  we  have  to 
realise  that  such  a judgment  has  to  be  made. 
All  day  long,  as  Jesus  hung  on  the  cross,  the 
crowds  passed  Him ; and  each  man’s  life  was 
affected  by  the  judgment  he  made  or  did  not 
make.  The  priest  or  the  Pharisee  who 
mocked — the  soldier  who  sat  at  the  foot  of 
the  Cross  and  diced — the  women  who  wept — 
the  pious  people  who  turned  away  their  faces — 
Simon  who  carried  the  cross — ^each  man’s  life 
was  conditioned  for  ever  by  his  attitude  that 
day,  whether  he  thought  so  or  not.  So, 
through  the  centuries,  the  procession  of  man- 
kind has  moved  past  the  Cross,  judging,  and 


2o8 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


made  or  unmade  by  their  judgments 
upon  it.  You  and  I are  face  to  face 
with  it  now;  some  judgment  upon  it  is 
inevitable — we  cannot  escape  it.  He  is  the 
central  figure  in  all  human  history,  and  on 
our  attitude  to  the  centre  all  depends  for  us. 
On  our  judgment  rests  in  great  measure  our 
use  and  place  in  society — ^as  we  ignore  or 
admire,  turn  away  or  follow,  hate  or  love. 
Him  who  has  meant  and  means  most  for  all 
mankind.  How  are  we  to  judge  Him? 

In  the  rest  of  this  lecture  I want  to  offer, 
not  a judgment,  but  a method — a caution  and 
a reminder  of  some  qualifications  that  we  must 
have,  if  we  are  not  to  judge  in  a shallow  way.* 

First  of  all,  let  us  recapitulate  a few  points. 
We  have  to  remind  ourselves  again  and  again 
that  we  have  to  touch  the  fact  independently 
of  preconception,  to  know  it  from  within,  and 
to  know  it  in  its  full  significance  and  its  true 
perspective.  A hundred  years  or  so  ago, 
Tieck,  writing  of  Novalis,  said : “ A spirit  of 


* Beng-el's  sentence  at  the  beginning:  of  his  Gnomon  (Pref. 
i vi.)  supplies  a useful  caution  : Quisquis  in  Scriptura  inter- 
pretanda  aliquid  navare  vult,  se  ipse  explorare  debet  quo  jure 
id  facial. 


THE  DIFFICULTY  OF  CRITICISM  209 


such  originality  must  first  be  comprehended, 
his  will  understood,  and  his  loving  intention 
felt  and  replied  to;  so  that  not  till  his  ideas 
have  taken  root  in  other  minds,  and  brought 
forth  new  ideas,  shall  we  see  rightly,  from  the 
historical  sequence,  what  place  he  himself 
occupied.”*  The  words  may  surely  be  applied 
to  the  more  difficult  task  we  have  in  hand,  and 
yet  how  often  it  is  true  that,  as  Bishop 
Creighton  wrote:  “We  are  clear  by  missing 
out  half  the  elements  involved.” 

We  have  further  to  remember  that  it  is  the 
task  of  criticism  to  distinguish  the  highest 
values,  for  these  are  the  true  ones.  Anybody, 
it  is  said,  could  write  a set  of  verses  as  good 
as  such  and  such  a poem  of  Wordsworth;  but 
the  question  is.  Who  could  equal  him  at 
his  best?  “A  line  of  Wordsworth’s,”  wrote 
Lamb,  “ is  a lever  to  lift  the  immortal  spirit.”! 
And  the  illustration  may  suggest  to  us  another 
thing.  Do  we  remember  how,  in  every  other 
sphere,  the  critic  has  to  be  trained  and  is  only 
trained  by  association  with  the  masterpiece? 
that  Wordsworth  had  to  grow  his  own  public, 

* Quoted  by  Carlyle  in  his  essay  on  Novalis. 

t Letter  to  Barton,  15  May,  1824  (Lucas,  No.  328), 

14 


210 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


because  reading  England  knew  only  too  well 
that  his  poetry  “would  not  do,”  for  the  simple 
reason  that  they  had  never  seen  any  poetry 
like  it  before  ? Who  will  say  he  is  ripe  enough 
to  judge  Jesus  Christ?  How  many  of  us  have 
judged  Him  from  the  Stoic  or  the  Epicurean 
standpoint  after  all?  We  live  in  the  twentieth 
century,  so  far  as  journalism  and  electric 
transit  are  concerned;  and  our  minds  have 
learned  from  nineteen  centuries  not  enough 
to  differentiate  us  from  the  Stoics  and 
Epicureans  who  laughed  at  Paul  on  the 
Areopagus.  Remember  what  Lamb  said 
about  the  men  who  talked  literature  at  him  in 
the  East  India  Company’s  office;*  and  let 
us  ask  how  far  we  are  trained  enough  for  the 
judgment  we  have  in  hand.  The  acutest 
minds  can  be  singularly  unintelligent.  Jeffrey, 
when  he  penned  the  opening  sentences  of  his 
famous  review  on  Wordsworth,  little  thought 
that,  with  all  his  brilliance  and  taste,  he  was 
making  his  name  a byword  for  ever  for  bad 
criticism. 

There  is  another  caution  of  which  we  need 
often  to  remind  ourselves.  We  are  to  apply 

* Letter  of  i8  February,  i8i8  (Lucas,  No.  229J 


PERSONALITY 


21  I 


ourselves  to  the  task  of  judging  Jesus  Christ, 
and  to  do  it  we  have  (as  it  is  called)  to  re- 
construct His  personality.  To  those  who 
know  anything  about  Him  the  very  words  will 
be  alarming  enough.  Anyone  who  has  tried 
to  reconstruct  a personality,  however  simple, 
knows  quite  well — knows  acutely  in  proportion 
to  the  pains  he  has  given  to  the  task — how 
difficult  it  is.  Wordsworth  tells  us  how  to  him 

the  lonely  roads 

Were  open  schools  in  which  I daily  read 
With  most  delight  the  passions  of  mankind, 
Whether  by  words,  looks,  sighs,  or  tears,  revealed ; 
There  saw  into  the  depth  of  human  souls. 

Souls  that  appear  to  have  no  depth  at  all 
To  careless  eyes. 

It  is  the  careless  eye  that  does  the  mischief.  The 
mimic  and  the  caricaturist  represent  a higher 
stage — a.  little  higher.  It  is  the  essence  of 
their  work — the  virtue  and  the  defect  of  it — 
that  they  always  give  their  subject  from  one 
angle.  Their  representations  convey  character, 
we  say,  but  never  completely.  The  sharp  nose 
or  the  squint  in  the  cartoon  suggests  the  man 
at  once,  if  it  is  only  half-a-dozen  strokes  of 
the  pencil.  But  a personality  is  a more  corn- 


212 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


plicated  thing.  Character  is  many-faceted.  It 
would  be  better,  indeed,  to  drop  such  a 
metaphor  from  a polished  stone,  and  to  try 
another  more  living.  Light  and  shade  pass 
over  the  long  grass  as  the  wind  sways  it  this 
way  and  that,  now  in  and  now  out  of  the 
shadow  of  the  tree,  tree  and  grass  both 
moving  in  the  breeze,  and  the  play  of  the 
gleams  upon  the  blades  is  infinite.  There  are 
characters  as  various.  Coleridge  applied  to 
Shakespeare  the  Greek  epithet  “myriad- 
minded,”  which  he  remembered  or  invented. 
Let  us  think  over  the  character  and  the  per- 
sonality, with  which  we  have  to  deal  in  Jesus 
Christ,  rather  more  carefully.  The  general 
teaching  of  the  Gospel  is  intelligible  and 
simple;  and  it  is  amazing  how,  if  you  let 
people  alone  with  the  Gospels,  they  will  under- 
stand Jesus  Christ,  if  they  are  simple  enough 
and  true  enough.  But  we  have  for  our 
purpose  to  gain  what  Paul  called  “ the  measure 
of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ.” 

There  are  four  qualifications,  if  I may  so 
call  them,  that  I would  suggest  for  anyone 
who  proposes  to  make  some  judgment  upon 
Jesus  Christ;  and  every  one  of  them  is  so 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FACTS  213 


very  obvious  that  I feel  reluctance  in  putting 
them  forward.  But  the  carelessness  of  men  and 
women  in  forming  and  expressing  opinions 
is  one  of  the  astounding  things  in  life ; it  is  so 
general  and  it  implies  so  much  profound  in- 
difference to  truth.  It  is  of  itself  a negation  of 
God.  It  is  no  new  thing.  In  the  Gospels 
we  find  our  Lord  remarking  upon  the  in- 
sensitiveness of  men  to  fact,  and  challenging 
them  to  face  fact  for  themselves. 

First  of  all,  then,  I set — ^^and  I do  it  quite 
simply  and  without  irony — the  knowledge  of 
the  plain  facts  of  our  Lord’s  life  as  recorded 
in  the  Gospels,  and  of  the  facts  of  the 
Church’s  history.  This  seems  so  obvious  as 
not  to  need  mention,  but  the  Gospels  do  not 
receive  that  study  to  which  they  are  entitled. 
People  have  a general  impression  of  them  at 
best,  and  learn  with  surprise  (to  quote  an 
instance)  that  in  the  narrative  of  the  Nativity 
the  Magi  are  in  one  Gospel  and  the  Shepherds 
in  another.  When  I read  Professor  Lake’s 
book  on  the  Resurrection,  I realised  with 
some  shame  that  I had  never  followed  out 
any  single  Gospel  in  its  story  of  what 
happened,  but  had  in  my  mind  a careless 


214 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


conflate  version,  , which  had  come  to  me  I 
did  not  know  how.  How  many  of  us  have  any 
clear  idea  of  the  characteristics  of  the  four 
writers  of  the  Gospels — to  say  nothing  of  Q 
or  the  Logia  ? How  many  of  us  have  studied 
the  methods  of  Matthew  and  Luke  in  using 
Mark  and  their  other  material?  1 will  go 
further,  and,  waiving  all  this  detailed  work 
on  our  authorities — ^elementary  enough — I 
would  ask  if  we  know  the  events  of  our  Lord’s 
life  and  His  words  ? One  has  not  far  to  go 
to  meet  extraordinary  ignorance  of  these,  and 
it  does  not  seem  to  stand  in  the  way  of  sweep- 
ing judgments  upon  Jesus  Christ.* 

I have  spoken  in  a previous  lecture  of  the 
permanent  value  to  us  of  the  historical  Jesus 
as  a safeguard  against  the  complete  evapora- 
tion of  the  Gospel  into  theory — no  imaginary 
danger,  as  the  history  of  the  Church  can  show. 
I need  say  nothing  at  this  point  of  the  intense 
relief  it  is  at  times  to  take  refuge  in  the  plain 
tale  of  the  life  and  teaching  of  the  actual 
Jesus — and  the  whole  of  it,  when  we  are 


* Quam  sapiens  argumentatrix  sibi  videtur  ignorantia 
humana,  is  the  caustic  remark  of  Tertullian  {De  Sped.  2). 


ON  READING  THE  GOSPELS 


2^5 


bombarded  with  ingenuities  and  eschato- 
logies. The  beauty,  and  the  sanity  and  the 
power  of  these  plain  books  without  adjectives 
come  full  of  healing  to  the  soul;  and  one 
recalls  with  sympathy  how  eighteen  centuries 
ago  the  plain  style  of  the  Christian’s  books 
was  one  of  the  things  that  attracted  Tatian  to 
Christianity.* 

What  happens  when  people  yield  to  this 
attraction  ? Here  are  a few  words,  not  my  own, 
but  those  of  one  who  was  brought  up  quite 
without  religious  training,  but  found  under 
some  stress  that  life  needs  a base  in  God : 
“ And  then  I began  to  read  the  Bible.  I was 
always  coming  on  bits  of  the  New  Testament 
in  books;  and  I tried  to  believe  the  appeal 
lay  in  the  style.  But  then  I took  my  courage 


* Tatian  meant  more  particularly  the  prophets.  In  passing 
it  does  seem  worth  while  to  ask  how  the  writers  of  the 
Gospel  came  to  write  as  they  did — plain  fact,  no  comment, 
no  word  of  admiration  for  Jesus  or  of  condemnation  for  His 
enemies.  The  same  sort  of  reserve  has  won  for  Thucydides 
a name,  among  modern  scholars,  for  intellectual  coldness  and 
aloofness — as  if  it  were  impossible  to  convey  real  feeling 
without  saying  so.  Ancient  critics,  however,  saw  and  felt  the 
power  and  pathos  of  Thucydides  through  the  reserve;  and 
the  quietness  of  the  evangelists  surely  adds  incalculably  to 
their  story. 


2i6 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


in  both  hands  and  read  the  New  Testament 
right  through — ^and  saw  there  was  nO'  contact 
(with  God)  except  in  Christ.” 

We  may  ask  the  man  who  criticises  Jesus 
Christ  if  he  has  honestly  read  that  history — 
with  the  decent  modicum  of  attention  that 
is  due  to  a book  which  means  so  much  to 
men  and  women.  With  a great  work,  a single 
reading  is  of  little  use ; it  is  only  intimacy  that 
counts.  One  might  ask,  further,  whether  the 
book  has  been  read  with  any  sense  of  that 
aftergrowth  of  human  association,  which,  in 
the  case  of  master-works,  adds  so  much  to 
the  value  of  what  the  writer  had  consciously 
in  mind,  or,  more  truly,  developes  what  he 
felt  from  what  he  expressed.  Such  books 
never  yield  their  meaning  to  the  hurried 
reader,  as  much  of  the  criticism  of  Euripides 
(for  example)  will  prove.  It  is  something  to 
read  a masterpiece  in  the  copy  some  friend 
has  used  and  pencilled,  and  to  follow  that 
friend  along  with  the  author,  ‘‘  reading  where 
the  quiet  hand  points.”  The  New  Testament, 
if  one  took  the  trouble  to  read  it  so,  is  full 
of  such  marks.  Think  of  that  chapter  which 
Knox  on  his  death-bed  asked  for,  as  the  one 


HISTORICAL  IMAGINATION 


217 


“ in  which  he  had  first  cast  anchor.”  * The 
New  Testament  is  not  to  be  understood  fully 
without  the  community  behind  it,  for  which 
it  was  written  and  which  has  lived  with  it 
all  the  centuries,  till  (in  more  senses  than 
one)  it  knows  it  by  heart. 

All  this  brings  me  to  what  I may  call  the 
second  qualification — the  historical  imagina- 
tion. Once  again  let  us  recall  Carlyle’s  words 
on  Novalis — of  the  value  of  a book  in  introduc- 
ing us  to  ” some  earnest,  deep-minded,  truth- 
loving  man  ” till  we  can  follow  the  movement 
of  this  thought.!  Can  we  read  the  Gospels  till 
we  penetrate  the  phrase  and  see  the  man — on 
the  hillside  among  his  friends,  and  catch  the 
gleam  of  his  eye,  and  mark  what  he  does 
with  his  hands;}; — how  the  casual  word  touches 
some  hidden  spring,  as  it  were,  and  from 
the  treasure  of  the  heart  comes  the  speech — 
and  such  speech!  Or  have  we  a higher  and 
keener  attention  for  Novalis?  Is  it  fair,  it 
may  be  asked,  to  expect  so  much  of  ordinary 
people?  That  is  to  beg  the  question.  The 

* John  xvii. ; Hume  Brown,  Life  of  Knox,  ii.,  p.  287. 

t See  p.  59. 

t Cf.  Mark  x.  21 ; i.  41  j and  Acts  xiii.  16 ; xxi.  40 ; xxvi.  i (all 
three  of  Paul  speaking). 


2i8 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


critic  is  not  an  ordinary  person,  if  there  are 
any  ordinary  persons  at  all.  We  are  all 
capable  of  much  more  mental  energy  than 
we  care  to  exert;  and  when  a man  begins  to 
talk  of  ordinary  people,  it  is  generally  a sign 
of  shuffling  of  some  sort.  In  any  case,  those 
of  us  who  are  in  earnest  about  Jesus  Christ, 
who  wish  really  to  understand  Him,  may  be 
expected  to  have  higher  standards  of  know- 
ledge and  sympathy. 

But  these,  after  all,  depend  less  on 
intellectual  than  on  moral  character.  It  is 
remarkable  how  Carlyle,  in  describing  one 
and  another  of  the  great  men  in  his  Essays, 
says  sooner  or  later  the  same  thing  about 
each  of  them,  even  when  they  are  so  different 
as  Boswell  and  Burns  and  Voltaire — that  the 
man  had  a great  loving  heart,  and  that  was 
how  he  could  interpret  men  and  speak  to 
men  and  win  them.  What  degree  of  loving 
insight  have  you  ? is  Carlyle’s  question,*  and 

* Cf.  the  passage  in  the  essay  on  Mirabeau : “ The  real 
quantity  of  our  insight, — how  justly  and  thoroughly  we  shall 
comprehend  the  nature  of  a thing,  especially  of  a human 
thing, — depends  on  our  patience,  our  fairness,  lovingness, 
what  strength  soever  we  have : intellect  comes  from  the  whole 
man,  as  it  is  the  light  that  enlightens  the  whole  man.” 


“ON  HIS  KNEES’’ 


219 


we  may  ask  it  of  the  student  of  the  Gospels. 
For  anyone  who  loves  the  Gospels  can  under- 
stand them  and  live  himself  into  the  scenes 
they  describe  till  he  knows  the  company  there 
to  some  purpose.  Sympathy  is  the  highest 
mode  of  intelligence.  The  word  has  suffered 
from  being  used  by  dull  people  to  cover  their 
coldness,  and  it  is  safer  tO'  counsel  reading 
with  admiration.  Goethe  said  that  Schlegel, 
if  he  was  to  criticise  Euripides,  ought  to  do 
it  “on  his  knees.”  If  we  tiy  this  plan  with 
a new  author,  we  find  often  enough  that  after 
a few  pages  we  have  unconsciously  risen  from 
our  knees;  the  man  is  not  great  enough  or 
true  enough  to  keep  us  there.  But,  be  it 
sympathy  or  admiration,  some  such  plan  is 
necessary  if  we  are  to  get  the  full  significance 
of  any  great  work  or  atiy  great  man,  and  be 
liberated  frotn  the  small  attitude  of  the  merely 
clever  person. 

The  third  qualification  is  some  natural  or 
cultivated  sympathy  with  the  fundamental 
ideas  and  feelings  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  it 
follows  from  what  we  have  just  been  consider- 
ing. Does  the  critic  stand  near  enough  to 
the  man  whom  he  criticises,  in  interests,  in 


220 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


tastes,  in  training?  Once  more  the  emphasis 
falls  on  the  necessity  of  the  critic  being 
trained.  The  criticism  of  the  outsider  is 
everywhere  recognised  as  worthless.  Is  a 
critic  of  Jesus  to  be  trusted  who  has  no 
essential  sympathy  with  religion;  who  does 
not  see  how  native  it  is  to  man,  like  art  and 
music  ;*  whose  instincts  for  religion  have 
become  atrophied?  Is  he  not,  rather,  like  a 
colour-blind  person,  who  has  not  studied 
pictures,  let  loose  in  a picture-gallery  ? What 
can  he  say  without  giving  himself  away  ? 
Jesus  is,  after  all,  the  highest  term  in  religion; 
and  just  as  a child  prefers  a coloured  picture- 
postcard  of  some  intelligible  kitten  or  horse 
to  any  Raphael  or  Botticelli,  the  man,  for 
whom  religion  is  not  a passion,  who  is  not 
intensely  conscious  of  those  needs  which 
religion  alone  can  satisfy,  cannot  be  expected 
to  care  about  Jesus.  The  savage  often  does 
not;  why  should  the  Epicurean,  or  anybody 


* Cf.  John  Watson,  The  Philosophical  Basis  of  Religion, 
p.  187;  “Religion  is  not  something  accidental  to  man,  but 
something  inseparable  from  his  rational  life.  It  is  that  un- 
dying and  inextinguishable  faith  in  the  divine,  the  denial 
of  which  is  ultimately  the  destruction  of  all  other  beliefs.” 


THE  TRAINING  OF  THE  CRITIC  221 


else  to  whom,  by  his  own  choice  in  life  or 
by  accident,  Jesus  is  as  yet  unintelligible 
in  His  greatness? 

Let  us  take  two  aspects  of  what  religion 
meant  to  Jesus,  and  ask  ourselves,  first,  how 
far  we  understand  His  passion  for  the 
redemption  of  men?  That  is  quite  a simple 
and  obvious  thing  to  ask.  “ The  Son  of  Man 
came  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  was  lost.” 
Do  we  realise  how  much  He  implied  by  “ lost,” 
or  to  what  point  of  salvation  He  meant  to 
bring  those  He  found?  We  are  all  touched 
to-day,  more  or  less,  by  the  social  needs  of 
millions  of  our  fellow-countrymen;  but  how 
far  are  we  prepared  to  go  to  save  them,  and 
how  high  do  we  think  of  raising  them  ? Is  our 
maximum  the  spiritual  heights  of  the  middle 
classes  ? Let  us  try  to  realise  the  intensity 
and  the  passion  with  which  Jesus  gave  Him- 
self “a  ransom  for  many  ” — ^^and  ask  ourselves 
how  much  we  are  prepared  to  face  for  the  sake 
of  the  vulgar  and  the  depraved  ? If  we  share 
His  mind  at  all  on  this  point,  we  shall  be 
able  to  understand  Him  growingly;  and  as 
we  do  so,  we  shall  realise  more  and  more 
the  amount  of  redeeming  which  He  saw  men 


222 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


need.  Indeed,  as  men  come  into  the  mind 
of  Jesus,  the  more  conscious  they  grow  how 
much  they  need  Him. 

Do  we  realise,  again,  in  any  vivid  or  true 
way  the  extent  and  nature  of  Jesus’  sense 
of  God?  how  He  sees  and  apprehends  God 
in  all  things,  not  merely  as  a great  item  in 
every  situation,  but  as  the  one  factor?  how 
alive  He  is  for  the  fact  of  God?  how  full 
all  life  is  of  God  for  Him?  Have  we  any 
sympathy  with,  or  intelligence  of,  one  whose 
life  is  so  filled  with  the  power  and  the  joy 
of  the  real  presence  of  God?  All  this  is 
obvious  in  the  Gospels,  if  we  are  trained 
enough  in  our  business  of  observation  to  see 
the  flame  in  the  burning  bush.  To  put  it 
more  directly.  Have  we  any  sense  of  needing 
God,  or  do  we  crave  at  all  for  contact  with 
God  ? If  we  do  not,  we  shall  not  be  interested 
in  Jesus. 

The  fourth  qualification  shall  be  the  sense 
of  insufficiency.  Plato  spoke  of  philosophy 
being  the  offspring  of  wonder;*  and  it  was 


* Theaetetus,  154E.  Cf.  Aristotle,  Metaphysica,  i.,  2,  who 
adds  that  the  cessation  of  wonder  is  the  end  of  all  philosophy. 


THE  SENSE  OF  INSUFFICIENCY  223 


a beautiful  and  illuminating  thought.  It  is 
wonder  that  makes  the  poet  and  the  painter; 
and  it  is  only  as  they  embody  it  in  their 
work  that  it  appeals  to  men  ;*  it  is  only  as  we 
accept  it  that  we  can  learn  the  meaning  and 
value  of  their  art.  When  this  faculty  of 
wonder  dies  out  in  us,  we  lose  the  world 
and  all  it  means  of  beauty  and  truth.  There 
is  human  nature,  there  is  that  morality  which 
is  deeply  implanted  in  man  and  without  which 
he  can  achieve  nothing  and  cannot  realise 
himself — who,  as  the  old  phrase  goes,  is 
sufficient  for  these  things  ? There  are  men 
always  in  every  sphere  who  are  masters  of 
everything  that  is  to  be  known  there,  and 
can  inform  us  completely — ^^and  we  turn  away 
from  them ; they  are  weary,  stale,  flat,  and 
unprofitable.  In  religion  it  is  the  same;  it 
is  only  as  we  grasp  its  wonder  that  we  can 
begin  to  understand.  In  all  these  things,  in 
Nature,  in  art,  in  morality,  in  religion,  the 
infinite  element  is  what  appeals  to  the  human 
mind  and  soul.  It  is  the  experience  of  the 
Church  that  in  Jesus  Christ  is  this  same 

* “ If  a poem  is  not  wonderful,”  says  a critic  of  our  owp 
day,  “ it  is  nothing." 


224 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


quality,  and  that  for  His  interpreter  the  same 
aptitude  for  the  infinite  is  essential.  As  men 
study  Him  in  earnest,  they  grow  less  satisfied 
with  their  knowledge  and  their  understanding 
of  Him;  He  goes  beyond  them,  and  they 
follow  here  with  the  same  sort  of  experience 
that  men  have  who  take  seriously  any  other 
permanent  aspect  of  God’s  manifestation  of 
Himself* — the  path  is  daily  lit  up  with  new 
wonder,  fresh  surprises  and  new  marvels 
quicken  the  follower,  as  the  exploration 
extends. 

The  German  Jew,  Borne,  said  that  Chris- 
tianity is  “ the  religion  of  all  poor  devils. ”f 
Jesus,  in  another  vernacular,  said  much  the 
same  thing.  It  is  for  the  people  who  are 
not  satisfied,  who  know  their  need  and  feel 
it  progressively — the  tempted,  the  beaten,  the 
miserable.  Christ  is  most  theirs  who  need 
Him  most  and  know  it;  and  He  is  best 
learned  through  the  sense  of  our  own  limita- 
tions. It  is  the  old  story  of  the  Church — He 
is  known  by  acceptance.  With  Him,  as  in 

* Cf.  3.  Striking  sentence  in  Mark  x.  32. 

t Brandes,  Main  Currents  in  Nineteenth  Century  Literature, 
vol.  vi.,  p.  97. 


“TO  KNOW  CHRIST” 


225 


the  case  of  every  real  interest,  the  secret  of 
knowledge  is  identification.  “ To  know 
Christ,”  said  Melanchthon,  “is  to  know  His 
benefits — not  to  contemplate  His  natures  or 
the  modes  of  His  incarnation.”*  Luther  said 
the  same : 

“ The  Sophists  have  described  Christ — -how 
He  should  be  Man  and  God — they  count  His 
legs  and  arms,  and  combine  His  two  natures 
together  wonderfully ; and  that  is  only  a 
sophistic  knowledge  of  the  Lord  Christ.  For 
Christ  is  not  called  Christ  for  having  two 
natures.  How  does  that  touch  me?  But  He 
bears  this  lordly  and  comfortable  name  from 
the  office  and  work  that  He  has  taken  upon 
Him;  that  gives  Him  the  name.  That  by 
nature  He  is  man  and  God,  is  His  affair; 
but  that  He  uses  His  office  and  pours  forth 
His  love  and  becomes  my  Saviour  and 
Redeemer,  that  is  all  to  my  comfort  and 
good.”t 


* Hoc  est  Christum  cognoscere,  beneficia  ejus  cognoscere,  non 
ejus  naturas,  modos  incarnationis  ejus  contucri  ; Intr.  to  his 
Loci,  1st  edition,  1521 ; quoted  by  Harnack,  History  of  Dogma 
(tr.',  vii.,  p.  198,  n. 

-t- Quoted  by  Harnack,  History  of  Dogma  (tr.),  vii.,  p.  2. 

15 


226 


THE  CHRISTIAN  TRADITION 


As  we  saw  before,  it  is  in  action  that  truth 
is  discovered  and  tested,*  by  the  application 
of  individual  experiment  to  inherited  ex- 
perience. Jesus  Christ  is  best  understood  in 
the  strenuous  life  of  love  and  service  of  men 
— in  “ battles  with  dulness  and  darkness,”  as 
Carlyle  called  them — in  the  failure  of  our 
strength,  when  His  power  comes  into  play — 
in  the  endeavour  to  meet  the  need  of  other 
men,  when  our  own  springs  of  help  are  dry 
and  we  turn  to  Him- — in  the  wrestle  with  God 
in  the  darkness,  when  He  alone  lets  in  the 
light  upon  God  for  which  we  crave.  ” Doubt 
of  any  sort  cannot  be  removed  except  by 
Action. ”t  It  is  in  work  of  this  sort  alone 
that  the  character  can  be  trained,  on  which 
depends  the  ‘‘loving  insight”  we  need,  and, 
indeed,  the  mind  with  all  its  powers.  ‘‘  How 
can  we,”  asked  Henry  David  Thoreau,  ‘‘ex- 
pect a harvest  of  thought  who  have  not 


* Falsehood,  says  Clement  of  Alexandria  (Protr.  77),  is  not 
got  rid  of  by  merely  putting  the  true  alongside  of  it,  but 
by  using  the  truth. 

t Christiani  hominis  est  non  de  dogmatis  magnifice  loqui  sed 
cum  deo  ardua  semper  et  magna  facere.  Zwingli,  quoted  by 
Harnack,  History  of  Dogma  (tr.),  vii.  (end). 


CONCLUSION 


227 


had  a seed-time  of  character?  ” How  can  we, 
we  in  turn  may  ask,  expect  to  understand  such 
a character,  such  a personality,  as  that  of 
Jesus  Christ,  if  we  have  never  grappled  in 
earnest  with  the  powers  of  sin  and  misery, 
over  which  He  won  the  victory,  “ not  without 
dust  and  heat  ” ? 

The  last  word  for  to-day  is  this.  When  a 
man  sets  about  judging  some  masterpiece  in 
art  or  literature,  as  long  as  he  knows  little 
about  it,  he  is  pleased  with  his  power  of 
judgment.  But  if  he  consort  in  earnest  with 
the  masterpiece,  till  he  knows  it,  the  positions 
are  reversed,  and  he  finds  that  the  master- 
piece becomes  his  judge  at  last — ^educates  him 
and  tests  him  and  shows  him  himself.  Some 
of  us  begin  by  judging  Jesus  Christ,  and 
find,  as  we  come  to  know  Him,  that  His 
standards  replace  ours,  that  the  very  nature 
of  the  case  requires  us,  in  the  old  phrase,  to 
learn  of  Him,  and  that  where  we  started  as 
critics,  we  end  as  disciples — ^and  are  glad 
of  it. 


INDEX 


Readers  are  reminded  that  the  chief  topics  will  be  found  in 
the  Table  of  Contents.  They  are,  therefore,  generally 
omitted  here. 


Animistic  peoples,  144,  147, 

173 

Apocalypse,  1 1 6 — 1 22 
Aristotle,  87,  222 
Arnold,  Matthew,  16 
Arrhabdn,  1 29 
Astrology,  151 
Astronomy,  6 

Augustine,  83,  90,  94,  too, 
180 

Aurelius,  Marcus,  62,  93,  189 
Auto-suggestion,  10 
Authority,  43 

Bdb,  24 
Bengel,  208 

Bernard  of  Morlaix,  63 
Bernard,  St.,  180 
Besant,  Mrs.,  146,  147 
Bismarck,  158,  159 
Boat-builder,  47 — 49 
Borne,  224 
Bousset,  W.,  158 

Burnt  Njal,  164 
Buddhism,  22,  24,  25,  63, 
171,  199 
Bunyan,  178 

Caesar,  75 
Caste,  157,  158 
Caird,  E.,  59 

Carlyle,  T.,  22,  58,  59,  92, 
106,  109,  no,  177,  179, 
188,  218,  226 

328 


Celsus,  1 12,  120,  125 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  130, 
139,  164,  226 
Clement  of  Rome,  127 
Clough,  34 
Copernicus,  6 

Daemons,  144 — 147 
Darwin,  7,  8 

Dei  Todi,  Giacopone,  186 
Dickinson,  G.  L.,  172,  173, 

174 

Dio  Chrysotom,  133 
Dogma,  39 
Doxology,  1 16 

Emerson,  106 

Fatalism,  21 
Fox,  George,  ii,  176 
Francis  of  Assisi,  181 
Friedlander,  G.,  202 
Friedlander,  M.,  112,  134, 

202,  203 

Galileo,  6 

Geology,  7 

Gibbon,  2,  72 

Goethe,  45,  81,  106,  219 

Harris,  Rendel,  186 
Hebrews,  Epistle  to,  113, 
114 

Hermas,  179 


229 


INDEX 


Herodotus,  143 
Hierodules,  154 
Hinduism,  23,  135,  147,  148 
History,  18,  19 

Ignatius,  133 

John,  Gospel  of,  114 — 116 

Kawaguchi,  25 
Kett,  156 
Knox,  216,  217 

Lamb,  Charles,  183,  209, 

210 

Lawson,  J.  C.,  147 
Livingstone,  167 
Longinus,  107 
Luther,  73,  75,  100,  109,  161, 
189,  203,  207,  225 

Macrobius,  144 
Markino,  202 
Melanchthon,  225 
Mendel,  9,  10 
Milton,  6,  7,  88,  107 
Muhammad,  22,  199 
Mysteries,  126,  127 

Name,  power  of  the,  143 
Neo-Platonism,  23,  86,  98, 
I5S 

Nereids,  147 

Nicodemus,  Gospel  of,  122 
Nietzsche,  63,  64,  131,  153 
Norden,  107,  108 
Novalis,  58,  208 

Pagan  world,  60 — 64 
Paul,  St.,  66,  67,  68,  90, 
98,  107,  1 13,  125,  130, 

«3i,  134,  137 


“ Perhapsology,”  80 
Philanthropy,  128 
Philosophy,  14,  84 — 86 
Pilgrim  in  India,  94,  95 
Plato,  s,  18,  39,  51,  64,  93, 
98,  168,  222 

Plutarch,  62,  72,  98,  155 
Poet,  27 — 30 

Race,  19,  20 
Rainy,  R.,  3,  55 
Ransom,  121 
Robinson  Crusoe,  52 
Rolle,  Richard,  181  — 183 

Seneca,  173 
Shakespeare,  75,  89 
Shaw,  G.  B.,  91,  165,  200 
Slavery,  120,  129,  134,  165 
Stoics,  63,  73,  89,  93,  97, 

Synesius,  156,  179 

Talmud,  203 
Tatian,  150,  151,  215 
Tertullian,  23,  83,  129,  189, 
214 

Theory,  39 — 42 
Thomas  of  Celano,  168, 
169 

Thoreau,  H.  D.,  226 
Tyndale,  W.,  73,  159,  160 

Watson,  J.,  220 
Wernle,  P.,  92,  117 
Wesley,  J.,  73,  176 
Woman,  162,  163 
Wordsworth,  W.,  15,  17,  28, 
181,  185,  209,  21 1 
Wycliffe,  166 


Zoroaster,  199 


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